Thanks for posting, those are exactly the thoughts I would have on seeing how things seem to be panning out for Saudi, before I came across the energy problem.
This is a very big fly in the ointment, around energy, and the way we use it, which will cause an even bigger disruption to all the ambitions of Saudi's rulers, to rule forever.
They don't put any value on energy for free, and are likely to be the last on the planet who ever will.
This is a slippery slope we are already noticing around the world, inflation is happening because until recently, money in the form of money as debt (promises to pay or do work), was more or less mostly fulfilled, most debts were being repaid, because most folk had the means to repay.
But now that is becoming increasingly untrue.
How is it possible that utilities energy companies and banks are going bust, even with record breaking recent "Profits"?
We can work out why, using a little knowledge of physics, assigning all Joules added and put to use by nature and all life on Earth, and us, as positive, and all Joules taken out from being useful to life on Earth by us or nature as negative.
It doesn't take long to realise we are actually discharging this battery of Joules much faster than anything charging it.
But money, issued only as debt, doesn't reflect this physical, existential reality at all, the only metrics we care about in the world of money as debt, are things like GDP, which if anything indicates rate of destruction to the planet, and if the effects of that destruction are only happening elsewhere in the world, why worry, keep taking the blue bill.
But the fact is these effects will ultimately end up with complete destruction of Earth, and the destructive effects are a hyperobject, the relative changes we will see are infinite, if nothing stops it.
Life itself, is a measure of Joules put to use on Earth.
By discharging it, we were never increasing life on Earth, we were always destroying it, thinking we were creating, but actually we were always destroying, by taking consistently more Joules out, than we put back.
Money is the mechanism we used to do this, issuing it mostly as debt.
Our real, physical debt now is an energy debt, owed to our planet.
The only way we can pay it back, is by noticing that the only source capable of adding Joules to Earth is the one that has always been doing it, the sun.
That is the only one we can work with, to pay back down this energy debt we now owe as a species to our planet.
The consequences of not doing it, are that now we are seeing money start to represent... nothing.
The irony is that the only remedy there is to begin issuing money for free.
How the Saudis must have twisted their religion to get that so badly wrong, is something historians will play with for a long time, if we survive.
Meantime, this known, here is what to expect will happen to these "Jewels" being created by Saudi:
They are in one if the hottest areas of the world.
They think that they've already seen how hot the planet can get, plus a couple of degrees temperature rise, predicted by the models created by the pseudo-science we call "Renewables".
So they will size all cooling and energy storage facilities accordingly.
The solar powered city you mentioned will have been designed with a power budget like this.
But in order to keep people under control, bound to do work for them, they have to keep issuing money as debt, never money for free, every penny received by anyone has to be conditional that they work for it.
The chain of demand for work, for what is effectively the energy we all need to live on, has to propagate down to the ground level, where, when all other work is done, only the work of extraction remains.
Without that work of extraction, the debt can't be repaid, therefore the money given has to become for free.
But then the person receiving free money is no longer under any obligation to do work, their money, has become for free.
So they will have to keep using oil, to maintain power over their subjects, who will rebel if they are given free money, they have no choice there. So the planet will continue to rise in temperature exponentially, way beyond whatever thermal limits they have designed their human dwellings to withstand, those installations will literally burn.
God help anyone caught there in that godless place, is all I can say.