01
About the Utility
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority is the emirate’s integrated utility for power and water, investing across generation, transmission and distribution and producing Dubai’s desalinated water supply. It reports as DEWA PJSC, a public joint stock company that files audited statements and quarterly results with the Dubai Financial Market. Water and electricity are reported as one business, and financial results are published for the group as a whole rather than by service. DEWA served 1,327,182 customer accounts at the end of 2025, and preliminary group revenue reached AED 32.84 billion. DEWA is also a founding member of the Dubai Sustainable Finance Working Group, alongside the Dubai Financial Market and DIFC.
02
Water System
DEWA’s water service is built on desalination, and its capacity has grown in steps rather than continuously. Installed capacity rose from 495 MIGD to 555 MIGD in early 2026, when Block A of the Hassyan seawater reverse osmosis plant was commissioned. Demand has kept climbing alongside it: system desalinated water demand reached a record 161.505 billion imperial gallons in 2025. The tightest operating constraint is the daily peak, which reached 487 MIG that year against installed capacity of 495 MIGD. Each step in capacity therefore matters directly to the security of supply during periods of peak demand.
Total water production
DEWA total water produced, million imperial gallons, 2016–2021
Reported actuals from a single table; later years are published on a different basis and are not joined to this series.
Sources: DEWA (PJSC) Sustainability Report 2021, installed capacity and total water produced table.03
Infrastructure & Performance
Network efficiency is DEWA’s strongest performance story: unaccounted-for water, defined as the difference between water supplied to Dubai and net billed consumption, fell from 7.1% in 2017 to 5.3% in 2021, and water network losses were 4.5% the following year, a result DEWA describes as the world’s lowest water line loss. Metering underpins this control through a large-scale smart water meter roll-out alongside smart electricity metering. Together these results describe a distribution system run as a measured, digitally monitored network.
04
Investment & Priorities
DEWA states that it has invested over AED 210 billion cumulatively in generation, transmission and distribution capacity. Spending remains heavy: the group invested AED 11.72 billion in 2025, and Hassyan Block A, commissioned in early 2026, is the latest addition to water capacity. The balance sheet has carried that programme while borrowing fell: audited total borrowings were lower at the end of 2024 than a year earlier, while net cash generated from operating activities rose.
05
Sustainability & Resilience
Because DEWA generates electricity as well as producing water, Dubai’s clean energy targets shape the whole system. The Dubai Clean Energy Strategy aims for 100 per cent clean energy by 2050, and clean power reached 16.23% of DEWA’s generation in 2025. On the demand side, DEWA is among the champions of Dubai’s Demand Side Management Strategy, which targets efficiency savings in electricity, water and transport fuel against business as usual.
06
Key Challenges
- Maintaining desalination headroom as annual demand and daily peaks set new records.
- Sustaining network losses at the low levels reached after years of reduction.
- Delivering the water savings expected under Dubai’s Demand Side Management Strategy.
- Raising clean power toward the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy’s 2030 and 2050 targets.
- Financing continued capacity investment while keeping borrowings on a downward path.