Dubai’s DEWA awards $237.1m contract for desalination plant

Dubai Electricity and Water Authority has awarded a Dhs871m ($237.1m) contract for the construction of a desalination plant in Jebel Ali to a joint venture of Spain’s Acciona Agua S.A and Dubai’s Belhasa Six Construct.

The new seawater reverse osmosis plant is designed to handle 40 million imperial gallons per day and features pre-treatment facilities.

It is expected to be commissioned in May 2020 to meet peak water demand in 2020 and beyond.

Read: DEWA awards Dhs16.3m advisory contract for desalination plant

“This project is in-line with our decoupling plans for water desalination and power production and water desalination using solar energy,” said DEWA managing director and CEO HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer

“The big projects launched by DEWA have contributed in reducing the production cost of electricity through solar energy on a global level, and we continue to decouple electricity production from water desalination to obtain 100 per cent desalinated water using a mix of clean energy and waste heat by 2030.”

The emirate plans to use reverse osmosis plants to expand its production capacity to 305 million gallons of desalinated water a day by 2030.

This will account for 41 per cent of the 750 million gallons per day total system capacity compared to 5 per cent in 2018.

DEWA said increasing the operational efficiency of decoupling electricity production would save around Dhs12bn ($3.26bn) and lower carbon emissions by 42 tonnes by 2030.