DEWA’s CEO Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer on taking Dubai’s infrastructure model global
After three decades of building one of the world’s most efficient utilities under the guidance and directives of the UAE’s wise leadership, H.E. Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer is taking the DEWA model to the world
18 August, 2026
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On May 15, H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, inaugurated the world’s tallest, largest and smartest net-positive government building.
Shaped like a sail in Al Jaddaf district, Al Shera’a, the Arabic word for sail, rises 19 storeys above Dubai Creek and, over the course of a year, will generate more clean energy than it consumes.
It is the new headquarters of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), designed as a physical statement of the emirate’s approach to infrastructure: ambitious, technology-led and measured by outcomes.
H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum was received by H.E Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD and CEO of DEWA, who briefed His Highness on the advanced cognitive system that distinguishes the building and makes it the smartest government building in the world. The system relies on Internet of Things technologies, big data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Al Shera’a is equipped with an integrated cognitive system connecting all operational systems and supported by more than 110,000 smart sensors that monitor environmental and operational data in real time, over 1,500 wireless access points and more than 3,200 network devices to achieve perfect synchronisation.
These generate more than 1.9 million automated control commands daily, enhancing operational integration and improving performance efficiency.
“Every achievement should be viewed as a launchpad for new phases of excellence and innovation,” H.H Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum said at the opening, reinforcing that principle. Al Tayer has spent three decades treating it exactly that way.
Leading from the front
Al Tayer has led DEWA since its establishment in 1992. In that time, the utility has been transformed into one of the world’s most closely benchmarked energy and water providers, ranking first globally across 13 key performance indicators and two regional benchmarks covering generation, transmission, distribution and customer service. His remit extends well beyond the utility itself.
He sits on the Dubai Executive Council, the Dubai Supreme Fiscal Committee and the Dubai Council. Al Tayer is also vice chairman of the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy and chairs or holds leadership positions across several of Dubai’s major industrial and infrastructure companies, including ENOC, Dragon Oil, Emirates Global Aluminium and EMPOWER. In 2025, that career drew an unusual salute.
Al Tayer became the first civilian recipient of the Life of Leadership Excellence Award from Britain’s Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, an institution more accustomed to recognising military leadership.
The recognition reflected a philosophy that has defined his tenure: execution as strategy. Q1 2026 continued that momentum, delivering DEWA’s highest-ever first-quarter revenue, operating profit, EBITDA and profit after tax. Revenue reached $1.76bn, while operating profit increased 53.6 per cent and profit after tax rose 89.9 per cent year on year. Cumulative investment in Dubai’s energy and water infrastructure has now exceeded $74bn, while customer accounts have increased to about 1.35 million.
What separates DEWA from many state utilities is that it does not behave like one. It reports with the discipline of a listed multinational — it has been listed on the Dubai Financial Market since April 2022.
In 2025, it delivered the type of financial performance expected from a global infrastructure company: record revenue, record profit and continued investment capacity.
DEWA reported record full-year results, with revenue reaching $8.94bn, EBITDA at $4.72bn and profit after tax at $2.47bn. Its performance was supported by record operational demand, with annual electricity generation reaching 62.21 TWh, including 10.10 TWh of clean power generation.
Peak power demand reached 11.39 GW, while total desalinated water produced stood at 161.5 billion imperial gallons. DEWA’s installed power capacity reached around 18 GW, while its installed desalination capacity climbed to 555 million imperial gallons per day, reflecting continued investment in Dubai’s expanding infrastructure needs.
Al Tayer’s description of what those numbers provide is “strategic freedom”: the ability to continue investing at scale while maintaining financial strength.
Profit, in that view, is not the objective. It is the mechanism that enables long-term investment while also supporting returns to shareholders through dividends. This approach has shaped everything from renewable energy expansion to digital transformation and now the authority’s most ambitious step yet: taking the DEWA model beyond Dubai.
Championing solar energy
If the balance sheet is the proof, solar is the conviction DEWA backed long before the economics were obvious. The Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world and holder of multiple Guinness World Records, began as a long-term commitment to a technology whose commercial case was still developing.
DEWA structured the project through the independent power producer (IPP) model, attracting international developers and investors while helping establish some of the lowest solar tariffs globally.
DEWA has increased the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park’s planned capacity for 2030 to 8,060 megawatts, well above the original target of 5,000 MW. This raises Dubai’s expected clean energy contribution to 36 per cent, up from the initial goal of 25 per cent, while increasing annual carbon emissions reductions to more than 8.5 million tonnes, surpassing the original target of 6.5 million tonnes and reinforcing the emirate’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2050.
In 2025, DEWA completed 1,000 MW of the solar park’s 1,800 MW sixth phase and achieved further global milestones, including the world’s tallest concentrated solar power tower at 263 metres and the largest thermal energy storage capacity of its kind, capable of storing 5,907 MWh. “We moved early into solar energy. Now we are taking this model globally,” Al Tayer has said. That approach has defined DEWA’s wider sustainability strategy: invest early, build scale and create systems that can be replicated. Alongside solar, DEWA is expanding other clean-energy technologies.
The Hatta Pumped-storage Hydroelectric Power Plant, the first of its kind in the GCC, will provide 250 MW of generation capacity and 1,500 MWh of energy storage. In water, the authority is shifting towards more efficient reverse-osmosis desalination technologies, reducing reliance on traditional thermal processes. By 2030, DEWA is planning to have 100 per cent of its desalinated water using waste heat and clean energy.
Reliability as a product
Behind these headline projects sits an operating record that has become one of DEWA’s strongest differentiators. Under H.H Sheikh Mohammed’s Dubai-It initiative, built around the principle that ambition must translate into measurable execution, DEWA has continued to set global benchmarks for operational performance, efficiency and service excellence.
The numbers explain why. Customer minutes lost, a core measure of electricity reliability, has fallen to 0.82 minutes per customer annually, equivalent to just 49 seconds, the world’s lowest. Electricity network losses stand at 2 per cent, compared with significantly higher levels in many developed markets, and it’s also the world’s lowest, while water-network losses have fallen to 4.4 per cent, among the world’s lowest. Dubai’s electricity system reliability exceeds 99.99 per cent. Increasingly, those gains are being driven by digital systems and artificial intelligence.
DEWA’s Automatic Smart Grid Restoration System can identify faults, isolate affected sections and restore electricity supply automatically. Its intelligent gas turbine controller at the Jebel Ali Power Station operates autonomously, while Rammas, DEWA’s AI-powered virtual employee, has handled more than 13 million customer queries since its launch in 2017.
The authority is backing this digital transformation through its Dhs7bn Smart Grid Strategy, which runs until 2035 and includes 19 enablers designed to improve efficiency, reduce losses and support renewable energy integration.
For Al Tayer, technology is not simply about automation. It is about creating a utility capable of anticipating demand, improving reliability and operating at greater scale.
Boosting the value chain
Growth at DEWA has not only been about building more infrastructure. It has also been about controlling more of the ecosystem around it. The authority has expanded its ownership position in strategic assets, including raising its stake in Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (EMPOWER), the world’s largest district cooling provider by connected capacity, from 56 per cent to 80 per cent in a transaction valued at $1.41bn.
The move reflects a broader strategy: secure control of assets that are central to Dubai’s future energy and sustainability needs. Today, DEWA oversees a portfolio of more than 10 successful operating companies and occupies multiple roles across the infrastructure value chain: planner, developer, financier, offtaker and shareholder. That integrated model is now the foundation for its international ambitions.
A new chapter: DEWA International
The next chapter began in June, when H.H Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Dubai Supreme Council of Energy, launched DEWA International, a wholly owned independent subsidiary created to develop conventional and clean energy and water projects globally.
The move marks a significant shift in DEWA’s role.
After spending more than three decades building Dubai’s infrastructure ecosystem, the authority is now positioning itself as a developer and partner beyond the emirate. For Al Tayer, the expansion is not about exporting individual projects. It is about exporting the systems, experience and operating model behind them.
“International expansion is not merely an ambition; it is a strategic imperative that strengthens DEWA across every dimension,” Al Tayer said. The approach will be measured and phased, beginning with markets where Dubai’s relationships, experience and geographic position provide a natural advantage before expanding further.
The proposition is built around capabilities developed in Dubai: project structuring, governance, risk allocation, digital transformation, operations and maintenance, and the ability to attract global investment through bankable infrastructure models.
A key part of that experience comes from DEWA’s independent water and power producer model, which has helped the authority attract international developers and investors while delivering competitive tariffs. “We are exporting not only projects, but our full set of learnings and capabilities,” Al Tayer said.
The company will focus on co-development and co-investment opportunities with governments, developers and financial institutions, bringing together Dubai’s infrastructure expertise with international partnerships.
“The company is set up. The work has already started,” Al Tayer said, pointing to the development of project pipelines and partnerships that will shape DEWA International’s future. For a utility that spent three decades proving its model at home, the next challenge is whether that model can work elsewhere.
Exporting a utility model
The creation of DEWA International represents more than an expansion strategy. It is a test of whether an operating model developed for one of the world’s fastest-growing cities can be adapted across different markets.
DEWA states that its advantage does not come from owning infrastructure alone. It comes from the system built around it: long-term planning, financial discipline, technology adoption and the ability to bring together governments, investors and private-sector partners. Through its independent power producer and independent water producer models, DEWA has developed experience in structuring large-scale infrastructure projects that attract international capital while maintaining competitive costs.
The authority’s role has evolved from being solely a utility provider into a broader infrastructure platform, combining planning, development, financing, procurement, operations and investment. That combination is what DEWA International intends to take abroad.
The subsidiary will focus on opportunities across electricity generation, renewable energy, water production and related infrastructure, working alongside governments, developers and investors. Al Tayer has stressed that international growth will be disciplined rather than driven by expansion for its own sake.
The strategy is to enter markets where DEWA’s experience, relationships and capabilities can create value, then build partnerships that allow projects to scale sustainably. The broader ambition reflects a changing global infrastructure landscape. Countries are looking for solutions that address rising electricity demand, water security, decarbonisation and the need for resilient urban systems.
Dubai’s experience offers a case study: a city that has expanded rapidly while maintaining high reliability, attracting investment and increasing the role of clean energy. Whether that model can travel will depend on how effectively it adapts to different regulatory environments, markets and infrastructure needs.
But DEWA believes the foundations are already proven. Success will ultimately depend not only on exporting technical expertise, but on adapting the DEWA model to meet the unique demands of markets around the world.
A bright strategy
It is easy to view DEWA’s recent milestones separately: record financial results, renewable energy expansion, a landmark headquarters and the launch of an international subsidiary. Al Tayer sees them as part of a single strategy.
The utility has spent more than three decades building operational strength, financial resilience and technological capability. Those foundations now underpin its next phase: moving from being a benchmark utility to becoming a global infrastructure partner. Along the way, DEWA has continued to focus on less visible measures of institutional strength.
It became the first organisation globally to receive Investors in People Platinum accreditation, reflecting its approach to workforce development and organisational culture. It has also achieved high scores through Dubai Government’s real-time happiness measurement system, reflecting its focus on customer experience.
The challenge ahead is different from the one DEWA faced when it began. Building power plants, desalination facilities and networks requires engineering expertise. Exporting an operating philosophy requires something harder: adapting culture, governance and decision-making processes across different markets.
That is the test facing DEWA International. The opportunity, however, is clear. As countries seek reliable, sustainable and investable infrastructure solutions, DEWA believes the experience built in Dubai can offer a blueprint.
As Al Tayer said, DEWA International “is the next chapter in this journey”.
