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Call to Monitor Desalination Plants Across the Country

DUBAI — The UAE needs a monitoring system at the federal level to regulate water desalination activity across the country, a top government official said.

The UAE is the second-largest market for desalinated water in the world after Saudi Arabia, with 95 per cent of its fresh water originating from the sea, said Hamad Al Hashemi, Managing Director of Dubai Institute of Technology-TechnoPark.

“A federal monitory system will help improve waste management to ensure more environment care with less negative impact,” Al Hashemi told Khaleej Times in an interview.

“In this part of the world we don’t have a choice. However, we need to use seawater in a smart way so that we don’t have any negative impact on environment,” he added.

The combined capacity of desalination plants in the United Arab Emirates is 8.4 million cubic metres of water per day, representing 13 per cent of the global 
desalination capacity.

Al Hashemi said the main reason for the large consumption of desalinated water in the country was the scarcity of drinking water.

“The country is also the world’s highest per capita consumer of desalinated water, which uses 550 litres per day compared to an average of 250 litres per day in other parts of the world,” Al Hashemi. Efforts are being made by the Dubai Water and Electricity Authority to bring down per capita consumption to 350 litres in the next three years, 
he said. The UAE has more than 18 desalination plants across the country and one of the largest plants in the world is being built in Fujairah.

Around $80 billion investment is expected in the Middle East desalination industry over the next few years, according to recent studies.

The Middle East and North Africa, or MENA, region needs to add about 2.7 million Cu m/day of desalination capacity every year to meet the rising water demand in the region, according to a research report by market analysts Frost & Sullivan.

Considering this, the desalination market in the MENA, which experienced a spectacular growth in recent years to emerge as the largest market for desalination plants, is expected to sustain the growth momentum. “More significantly, the growth has not only occurred in the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, countries that have practised desalination for long, but also in countries such as Algeria, which has awarded several contracts for large-scale desalination plants,” Frost and Sullivan Senior Research Analyst Vivek Gautam said.

· abdulbasit@khaleejtimes.com