Saudi Arabia's futuristic Neom project aims to embrace green flying taxis, but the world's top oil exporter has no plans to phase down fossil fuels

The planned design of The Line in Neom. NEOM

• Saudi Arabia is planning a zero-carbon region called The Line in its Neom development project.
• Neom is working with Volocopter on electric flying taxis for transportation.
• While it’s promoting sustainability, Saudi Arabia has indicated it won’t phase down fossil fuels.
• This article is part of “Future of Sustainable Aerospace,” a series exploring the industry’s green trends. 

Of all the glitzy projects Saudi Arabia is embarking on, perhaps the most eccentric is Neom. The kingdom plans to spend over half a trillion dollars transforming the desert into 10 futuristic regions, including a floating port city and a yachting hub.

The most famous of them is The Line, a 0.12-mile-wide and 105-mile-long city with a mirrored facade. Saudi Arabia hopes Neom will become home to 9 million people in a “vertical garden city” with daily essentials within a five-minute walk.

It says high-speed rail will take citizens from one end to the other in 20 minutes. It plans to have no roads, traffic, or pollution, with everything powered by renewable energy. And it aims to gather much more data about residents and services than other so-called smart cities do.

A design for The Line. Neom

Neom has a big aviation focus. It plans to have four airports to connect it internationally. Currently, direct flights are available from Neom Bay Airport to Dubai International and London Heathrow.

Boom Supersonic, an American startup designing an airliner that could cross the Atlantic in 3 ½ hours and use only sustainable aviation fuel, announced in November an investment from Neom. It didn’t disclose the size of the investment.

Since 2021, Neom has worked on a joint venture with Volocopter, a German company designing electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft, better known as eVTOLs or flying taxis. Powered by batteries, they wouldn’t emit any carbon.

Neom, which has ordered 15 of its aircraft, invested $175 million in Volocopter’s Series E funding round in November 2022.

Borja Blond, the CEO of the Neom-Volocopter joint venture, described its ambitions last month during a presentation at the Dubai Air Show, which Business Insider attended.

The plan is for Neom to operate three kinds of Volocopter’s eVTOLs: the VoloCity, the VoloRegion, and the VoloDrone. Neom aims to have a fleet by 2025, though it’s not clear how many aircraft that would entail.

“We really believe that Volocopter is close to getting their aircraft certified,” Blond said.

Volocopter is aiming to be certified by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency in time for the Olympics next summer in Paris, where it plans to run its first service.

Volocopter’s VoloCity in flight. ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images

The drone, designed to carry up to 330 pounds, would be used for some cargo.

Since the VoloCity is designed to travel only 35 kilometers, or about 22 miles, at a time, it’d function as a flying taxi to take people around a region like The Line.

Neom plans to use the VoloRegion, with its top speed of 137 mph and range of 220 kilometers, to take passengers between regions, though the presentation said it could also work intraregionally.

“We need to think about connecting all those regions within a seamless manner and being very well aligned with the vision that we have here,” Blond said. “Basically we want to operate with 100% renewable energy.”

Neom plans to leave 95% of the region untouched, serving as one of the world’s largest nature reserves. The Line is designed with huge mirrors partly to reflect the vast natural landscape.

Blond said Neom does not “have the opportunity to build big runways, a lot of airports,” adding that that makes eVTOLs a good solution for Neom’s transportation needs.

He said the goal is to create safe flight routes for the VoloRegion aircraft over less populated areas.

“We want to bring a blueprint to the rest of the world: This is what we have done. This is how we can progress to future cities,” Blond said.

Saudi Arabia won’t phase down fossil fuels

But while the country is pushing renewable energy at home, it’s pushing for huge profits from fossil fuels abroad.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan — which includes Neom and The Line — aims to make its economy less reliant on oil, but the kingdom recently suggested it won’t decrease its exports of the fossil fuel.

Asked at the COP28 summit this week whether he’d agree to phasing down fossil fuels, the country’s energy minister said, “Absolutely not,” Bloomberg reported.

An investigation by Channel 4 and the Centre for Climate Reporting published in November said officials from Saudi Arabia’s Oil Sustainability Program acknowledged the country had a state-backed plan to target Africa and Asia with oil products.

Speaking about the dissonance between Saudi Arabia’s green-energy plans and its status as the top oil exporter, Jim Krane, an energy-geopolitics expert at Rice University, told Time last year: “They like to have their cake and eat it.

“The Saudis’ ambition is to be the last man standing in the global oil market,” he added. “They want the last drop of oil drilled to come from a Saudi field.”