When the nation that has so much damn oil that it became a ubiquitous metaphor for rampant abundance—massive natural gas reserves make America the Saudi Arabia of gas! The North Sea could be the Saudi Arabia of wind!—starts emptying its piggybank into solar power, maybe it’s finally time to start accepting that the age of crude is over.The oil-richest nation in the world, Saudi Arabia is planning on spending $109 billion on clean energy projects, in an effort to become one of the world’s largest solar markets.Here’s Businessweek: “The world's largest crude oil exporter aims to have 41,000 megawatts of solar capacity by 2032, said Maher al-Odan, a consultant at the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy. Khalid al-Suliman … nuclear, wind and geothermal would contribute 21,000 megawatts.” The rest is solar, and all told, it would be enough to supply the nation with one-third of its demand.This obviously makes a remarkable amount of sense. Saudia Arabia is a gigantic sun-soaked nation, and any sun-soaked nation is an ideal candidate for solar power. Also interesting is that Saudi Arabia is doubling down on a relatively nascent technology, concentrated solar power (CSP). CSP involves erecting a series of mirrors that concentrate sunlight onto a small point, which generates heat. These kinds of plants can often be built to store energy for use at night, which means Saudi Arabia may be angling for around-the-clock clean power.Clearly, the story is making headlines due to the symbolic nature of the announcement—the king of the oil states goes green! But this is more than cute: Saudia Arabia currently gets 65% of its power by burning oil (almost nobody really does this anymore). The richest petro-state ever, in other words, has got the memo that oil is on its way out, and is declaring solar the future—not quietly, behind closed doors, but with a big old PR campaign sure to get shouted around the world. Saudia Arabia officially wants to be the Saudi Arabia of solar.Pgegreenenergy via Flickr