Deputy minister receives Australian ambassador to Saudi Arabia

RIYADH: Experts at a Riyadh conference have discussed the challenge of improving sustainable practices while remaining profitable.

Javed Akbar, chief governance, risk, insurance and compliance officer at chemical manufacturer Tasnee, spoke to Arab News on the sidelines of the World ESG Summit in Riyadh on Tuesday.

“Balancing itself is a challenge, in terms of achieving economic goals and sustainability development goals,” he said.

“Significant spending” is required to achieve sustainability goals,” Akbar added.

A 2024 UN report found that between $2.5 trillion to $4 trillion needs to be spent annually to meet the organization’s sustainable development goals.

Akbar said businesses that are “primarily for profit” struggle to focus on sustainability.

Another challenge businesses face is the lack of a strong sustainable ecosystem, he said.

For example, some businesses may have positive intentions and want to invest in sustainability goals, but other partners may not share these goals.

Muna Abdulkadir Al-Amer, general manager at Naqaa Solutions for Environmental Services, spoke to Arab News about the financial benefits of sustainability.

When asked about how companies could balance economic growth and environmental protection, she said: “It actually goes hand in hand. We can provide it in a model where it can be profitable as well and has some sort of financial sustainability for the client.”

She highlighted how green practices can be profitable, saying: “When you are recycling, the materials that you are collecting, after they are segregated and cleaned, are worth money.

“When we sell them for the recycling factories, they are worth money and this money goes back to the client.”

However, she added that Naqaa’s primary focus was sustainability and not profitability.

This results in reducing waste and encouraging environmental protection, while “the financial return will go back to you,” Al-Amer said.

Naqaa was founded in 2011 as a university project between Al-Amer and her friends. Soon after the group graduated from Dar Alhekma University in Jeddah, they began receiving clients, including international companies aiming to improve sustainability efforts.

Finally, focusing on economic growth and environmental protection can bring a sense of social responsibility for people toward their societies, as collaborative work can make a difference for the overall ecosystem, Al-Amer said.

“What we are looking for is the social impacts of it there, where they (employees) come to a working environment and they are engaging in a bigger purpose in the organization they work at,” said Al-Amer.

RIYADH: As industries across the Kingdom strive to leverage the power of artificial intelligence, the development of quantum computing is expected to drive technological breakthroughs with the ability to shape industries, industry experts predicted on Tuesday.

Quantum computers uses qubits, a basic unit of information, to run multidimensional algorithms, rather than the binary 1s and 0s in traditional computing. This means the machines are more powerful and capable of solving complex problems much faster than traditional computers.

Speaking at the LEAP technology conference in Riyadh during a panel discussion titled “Quantum Leap: The Intersection of Quantum Computing and AI,” Daniela Herrmann, the co-founder of quantum computing platform Dynex, highlighted Saudi Arabia’s progressive efforts in the development of artificial intelligence and painted a positive picture of the country’s future role in the development of quantum computing.

“There is an amazing initiative already in AI, on ethics, and I think the Kingdom could play an enormous role in expanding that … also into quantum (computing),” she said.

“The Kingdom, as it is, is very foresighted and extremely progressive. I do promise myself that the Kingdom would be a fast driver of supporting the movement towards mainstream (quantum computing).”

The use of quantum computing could be particularly beneficial in the health and automotive industries, Herrmann added.

The breakthrough technology is not a new concept for the Kingdom. Last year, for example, Aramco signed an agreement with tech company Pasqal to deploy the country’s first quantum computer. In 2021, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology announced a collaboration with Zapata Computing in the US.

During the panel discussion, Bob Sutor, the CEO of Sutor Group Intelligence and Advisory, stressed the difficulty level of quantum computing development, and cautioned that the future of the technology remains uncertain.

“Quantum computing, on one hand, the science, the engineering, is very, very hard, but it’s also very, very hard to understand the relative quality of them and how quickly they will develop … so the fact is, we don’t quite know when we will have real quantum computers, right, at scale,” he said.

Nevertheless, Sutor said he is hopeful that AI will help “drive the development of the hardware” and added: “I think as we open up the world and we think of quantum networking, quantum communications beyond this, this is where the quantum and AI thing is really going to shock you.”

Reflecting on the present state of quantum computing and what comes next, Hermann said: “It is a fascinating time we are entering into.”

LEAP began on Sunday and concludes on Wednesday. The annual event in Riyadh, which began in 2022, aims to play a critical role in Saudi Arabia’s ambitions to become a global technology hub, in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 plan for national development and diversification of the economy. To that end, Saudi authorities have pledged $100 billion of investment to advance the nation’s tech sector.

LEAP 2025 features more than 680 tech startups, 1,100 speakers, 1,800 technology brands, and more than 170,000 visitors, organizers said.