Department of Energy, Abu Dhabi Emirate

About the Utility

The Department of Energy (DoE) is the sector regulator for Abu Dhabi’s energy and water services, and has committed to leading the development of their policies, strategies and regulatory systems. Operating roles sit with licensed companies. Desalination plants contracted by the Emirates Water and Electricity Company (EWEC) produce desalinated water, TRANSCO runs the transmission network, and the distribution companies ADDC and AADC supply customers, while a dedicated sewerage company operates the sewer network. The DoE sets price controls for these four network companies and approves the Desalination Security Standard, which requires water demand to be met with a loss of load expectation of no more than one day in ten years.

Water System

Groundwater still supplies around 60% of the water used in the emirate, but it is pumped at about twenty times its natural recharge and little of it is fresh. The transmission system instead carries desalinated water, and reverse osmosis is displacing thermal desalination, producing 45% of the water generated by EWEC-contracted plants in 2025. Demand for desalinated water has been broadly stable since 2016, even as the distribution companies have added customers. Transmission is the main pressure point: losses rose to 2.34% in 2023, above the 2% threshold that TRANSCO is working with the DoE to stay below.

Wastewater System

Wastewater sits inside the DoE’s regulated sector: the sewerage company is one of the four network companies under its price controls. The 2023 technical report records a 10,020 km sewer network with 260 pumping stations operated by ADSWS; earlier reports named ADSSC as the network operator. Recycled water is one of the emirate’s three water sources, with desalinated and ground water, and the DoE’s Integrated Water Model uses all three to guide allocation policy. Reuse is rising: 72% of recycled water produced was reused that year, against 60% three years earlier.

Investment & Priorities

Network investment is governed by DoE price controls, and the figures are allowances rather than outturn spending. For the second control, running from 2023 to 2026, the DoE allowed AED 16,202 million of capital expenditure across the four network companies, about 23% below their adjusted forecasts, and set the sector’s cost of capital at 4.9%. Production capacity is procured separately: EWEC’s planning recommends at least 0.28 Mm³/day of additional reverse osmosis by 2029, on top of the Mirfa, Shuweihat and Abu Dhabi Islands projects.

Sustainability & Resilience

Resilience planning rests on security of supply and the carbon cost of desalination. The DoE’s Integrated Water Model simulates demand growth and allocation under environmental and socio-economic scenarios, complementing its energy model in a water-energy-food nexus approach. EWEC forecasts the emirate’s peak water requirement to keep rising. Emissions intensity has not yet settled: the carbon intensity of water was 10.6 kg/m³ in 2025, up from the previous year.

Key Challenges

1. Protecting groundwater reserves that are pumped far beyond natural recharge and are now largely saline.
2. Delivering new reverse osmosis capacity in step with forecast growth in peak water demand.
3. Maintaining transmission losses below the 2% threshold after they rose above it in 2023.
4. Reducing the carbon intensity of desalinated water while clean energy expands.
5. Expanding the reuse of recycled water, the emirate’s third water source.

Major Projects