Saudi Arabia will start soliciting bids in the next few weeks for the first phase of a “massive” renewable-energy program costing $30 billion to $50 billion, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said.

OPEC’s biggest producer plans to generate close to 10 gigawatts from renewables, primarily solar and wind power, by 2023, he said at an energy conference in Abu Dhabi. The first tender may be for 700 megawatts of capacity at a cost of about $700 million, according to Roberto de Diego Arozamena, chief executive officer of Saudi power developer Abdul Latif Jameel Energy, which plans to bid for the contract.

Saudi Arabia plans by 2030 to produce 70 percent of its power from natural gas and 30 percent from renewables and other sources, Al-Falih said Monday, quoted by Bloomberg. He didn’t say how much renewables capacity the nation would be tendering in coming weeks.

The kingdom is among crude exporters struggling with budget deficits after oil prices languished for two years at about $50 a barrel. Building more solar plants and developing a nuclear-power industry is part of a broader plan that Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman announced in April to diversify the economy away from crude sales as the main source of government income.

The goal of 10 gigawatts is “only the beginning,” Al-Falih said. “I’m not able to give you the number of where we will be in 2050.”

Saudi Arabia is also “really moving” to develop nuclear power and intends to build two reactors with a combined capacity of 2.8 gigawatts, Al-Falih said. But the projects are at the beginning, and it is not known when they’ll become operational.