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Desalination & Non-Conventional Water

Knowledge Hubs › Desalination & Non-Conventional Water

Knowledge Hub

Desalination & Non-Conventional Water

Seawater and brackish desalination, the backbone of Gulf supply: costs, capacity and the shift to reverse osmosis linked to renewable power.

42%
of the world's operational desalination capacity sits in the MENA region, at least
909
thousand m³/day at Taweelah, the world's largest RO plant
41%
of Abu Dhabi's desalinated water came from reverse osmosis in 2024, against 6% in 2014
$45.7 bn
tracked desalination pipeline: projects not yet operating, of US$97.2 bn disclosed across all stages, including combined water and power schemes

Why it matters

In much of this region, drinking water depends directly on machines. The European Commission’s own sector review puts at least 42% of the world’s operational desalination capacity in the Middle East and North Africa, and the standard global census puts 48% of production here.1 2 In Qatar desalinated seawater is 99% of drinking water, in Bahrain more than 90%, in Kuwait 90%, Oman 86%, Saudi Arabia 70% and the UAE 42%.3 Gulf capacity accelerated after the oil crises of the 1970s, and cities such as Doha, Dubai, Manama and Kuwait City would not be possible without it.3

For companies it is a large market. It offers multi-billion-dollar independent water projects procured on repeatable templates, an older thermal fleet being converted or retired on published dates, and a new wave of plants tied to renewable power.

$0.49
US$ per m³, the Taweelah bid of 2019 that reset what desalinated water was thought to cost

State of the region

Two generations of technology coexist. The Gulf’s legacy fleet is thermal: multi-stage flash and multi-effect distillation, co-located with power stations. Nearly everything new is seawater reverse osmosis, which uses less energy per cubic metre than thermal distillation. Globally, reverse osmosis is now about 70% of capacity against roughly 65% in 2019, and thermal about 25%.1

Abu Dhabi’s transition can be followed in its offtaker’s own statistics, which put the generation split at 94% thermal and 6% reverse osmosis in 2014, 73 to 27 in 2022 and 59 to 41 in 2024, with thermal output falling from 1,247 to 696 million cubic metres a year while reverse osmosis rose from 75 to 476 million. Two plants show how it happens: Umm Al Nar East and West both went to zero output from 2020, while the Taweelah reverse-osmosis plant went from 7.17 million cubic metres in 2021 to 297.16 million in 2024.4

Scale is the other story. Global installed capacity reached about 91.5 million cubic metres a day in 2024 on IDRA figures, with contracted projects taking committed capacity to roughly 105 million; the same page also reports about 135 million cubic metres a day across more than 22,000 operational plants, without reconciling the two.1

The fleet, market by market

Saudi Arabia: the largest fleet, mid-restructure

Two figures circulate and they measure different things. The National Transformation Programme reports national capacity above 16 million cubic metres a day at the end of 2025, up 247.8% on 2016, on a path of 4.6 million in 2016 and 5.9 million in 2020. The procurement company’s own planning figure, capacity serving urban demand, is 11.41 million cubic metres a day in 2025 rising to 16.25 million by 2031.5 6 Desalinated water is 78.4% of urban supply, ground and surface water the remaining 21.6%.6

The institutions moved under it. The Saline Water Conversion Corporation became the Saudi Water Authority in 2024 and holds the regulator’s mandate while still operating most of the production fleet, pending a transfer ordered in 2022. Procurement sits with Sharakat, whose seven-year statement lists 53 procurement entries, including seven clusters covering 123 small sewage treatment plants.6 That is covered in full in the governance case study.

United Arab Emirates: the biggest reverse-osmosis plants ever built

Taweelah runs at 909,218 cubic metres a day on its offtaker’s register, the largest reverse-osmosis plant in operation, with commercial operation in the first quarter of 2024 under a 30-year water purchase agreement; ACWA Power holds 40% alongside TAQA and Mubadala and the project cost about US$907 million.4 7 The wider Abu Dhabi fleet shows the same shift: Mirfa 2 at 545,531 cubic metres a day from 2025 and Shuweihat S4 at 318,226 from 2026; thermal production in 2024 also came from Taweelah, New Mirfa and Fujairah, as well as Shuweihat and Sas Al Nakhl.4

Dubai is where the market’s most quoted number came from, and where it broke. See the economics section below.

North Africa: the growth market

Algeria’s 2025 programme comprised five 300,000 cubic metre a day plants, at Cap Blanc near Oran, Fouka 2 in Tipasa, Cap Djinet 2 in Boumerdès, Koudiet Eddraouche in El Tarf and Tighremt-Toudja in Béjaïa; four were formally inaugurated during the year,8 while Tighremt-Toudja entered initial operation in June and reached full capacity on 1 December.9 Together they add 1.5 million cubic metres a day, taking national capacity to 3.7 million and serving about 15 million people at a cost of some US$2.4 billion, overseen by the Algerian Energy Company.10 The ministry puts desalination at more than 42% of drinking-water production under the new programme, up from 18%, and lists seven further plants for 2025 to 2030;11 another account refers to three,10 a reason to treat any announced plant count for Algeria as provisional.

Morocco is building Africa’s largest plant at Casablanca, 300 million cubic metres a year for ONEE, financed on 8 May 2025 at MAD 6.5 billion with Acciona holding 50%, Green of Africa 45% and AfriquiaGaz 5%. It is powered by wind rather than solar, taking about 47% of the 360 MW Bir Anzarane farm.12 Agadir is expanding from 275,000 to 400,000 cubic metres a day, with the expanded plant expected to become operational in 2026 or 2027 and a wind farm of more than 150 MW expected to launch in 2027.13 The programme is the subject of our water and climate case study.

Israel: municipal demand largely covered, and a warning about concentration

Six Mediterranean plants operate, with the Western Galilee scheme awarded to IDE Technologies in November 2022 as the seventh and the first in the north. Sorek 2 is the largest addition, at 672,000 cubic metres a day on its builder’s figure, due in early 2024 but delayed partly by the war,14 and it reached full operation on 25 January 2026 at 200 million cubic metres a year,15 under a 25-year build-operate-transfer contract with the state as offtaker.16

On Saturday 29 August 2026, five of the six shut down when microalgae were swept north from the Nile Delta; by the following Wednesday two were back on line and Ashkelon and Ashdod were still closed.17 In June 2026 the government approved a plan to reach 2.3 billion cubic metres a year by 2050 and 2.75 billion by 2075, and for the first time allowed private entities to plan and develop plants of at least 100 million cubic metres a year.18 The Water Authority’s February 2025 planning deck had aimed for 1,400 million cubic metres by 2031 and 1,750 million by 2050, with Western Galilee due in 2026 and Emek Hefer to follow.19

Iraq, Bahrain and the newest entrants

Basra is building a one million cubic metre a day plant with a dedicated 300 MW power station; work began in July 202520 and the project was reported at about US$4 billion in 2025.21 PowerChina’s EPC contract, signed in January 2026, is worth about US$2.4 billion,22 and a separate US$1.32 billion transmission package was awarded in August 2026.23 Bahrain, whose water supply has come entirely from desalination since 2016 and whose capacity was reported at 213.4 million imperial gallons a day,24 put its first independent water project, Hidd, out to tender. Bids were opened in March 2026,25 with ACWA Power the only remaining bidder by July.26

Libya is the counter-example, and the reason capacity statistics need auditing. At a meeting convened by the prime minister in July 2024, the national desalination company reported Tobruk running at 20% of capacity, Derna at 50%, Susah and Zawiya at 25% each, and the Zliten plants not operating at all.27

Case study

One case in this sector, examined in full.

Case study

Taweelah: what scale did to the price of seawater

At 909,218 cubic metres a day, the largest reverse-osmosis plant in operation. Its 2019 tariff was a step in a fall that took Gulf desalination bids down by nearly half, from the 2018 Rabigh 3 bid to the 2020 Hassyan bid, which was never financed.

Interactive dashboard

The hub's headline metric for all twenty countries. Hover, tap or focus a country; the ranked table sits alongside.

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Sources and notes

Desalinated water as a share of water supply, as shown on each country profile: FAO AQUASTAT (share of total water withdrawal) or a national source, latest year from 2015, so the measure and year differ by country. Countries with no sourced figure are left blank. The Golan Heights have been occupied by Israel since 1967; UN Security Council resolution 497 (1981) declared Israel's decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration there null and void. Shown as a separate area, bounded by dashed lines. The area as drawn includes the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims; the UN Secretary-General reported in 2000 that these farmlands lie in the area of operations of the UN Disengagement Observer Force and in an area occupied by Israel since 1967 (S/2000/460, paragraph 17). Golan outline: GADM, as carried by WRI Aqueduct 4.0.

Market map

Major tracked desalination facilities and programmes: the large plants, not every package unit. Hover a marker for the project and its status; click through to the database.

OperationalUnder constructionIn tenderPlannedAwarded, stalled or out of service circle size ∝ tracked investment

Sources and notes

The Golan Heights have been occupied by Israel since 1967; UN Security Council resolution 497 (1981) declared Israel's decision to impose its laws, jurisdiction and administration there null and void. Shown as a separate area, bounded by dashed lines. The area as drawn includes the Shebaa Farms, which Lebanon claims; the UN Secretary-General reported in 2000 that these farmlands lie in the area of operations of the UN Disengagement Observer Force and in an area occupied by Israel since 1967 (S/2000/460, paragraph 17). Golan outline: GADM, as carried by WRI Aqueduct 4.0.

Projects & tenders

The tracked projects in this sector and the structured procurements coming next, straight from our databases.

Projects

In procurement

How the deals are structured

The region’s signature procurement template is the independent water project. A state offtaker tenders a long-term water purchase agreement, developer consortia compete on the levelised tariff, and financing is limited-recourse project debt. Tenors have lengthened: the Abu Dhabi offtaker’s register shows mostly 20-year agreements on 2005 to 2011 vintages and 30-year agreements on 2024 to 2026 ones, while Saudi planning ties privately procured plants to 25-year purchase agreements and assumes a 35-year life for public plants.4 6 Winning tariffs are often published, particularly in Saudi Arabia, which keeps the market unusually transparent. Jordan adapts the same structure with development-finance cover,28 and Morocco with Spanish export-credit support.12 Three schemes show the range:

Taweelah, UAE

The world's largest reverse-osmosis plant at 909,218 m³/day, procured by EWEC and delivered by a consortium in which ACWA Power holds 40% alongside TAQA and Mubadala, for about US$907 million. Awarded in January 2019 at a tariff of about US$0.49/m³, it made reverse osmosis the default for new Gulf capacity.

Project record Full case study

Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia

A hybrid plant of 1.05 million m³/day, multi-stage flash and reverse osmosis alongside 2.65 GW of power, serving Riyadh and eastern parts of the kingdom. The attempted sale of a 60% stake, for which five bidders were shortlisted, was suspended in July 2021 over pandemic economics and concerns about the plant's age and environmental credentials.

Casablanca, Morocco

Africa's largest desalination plant, with 548,000 m³/day in its first phase and 822,000 m³/day, or 300 million m³ a year, at full build, for ONEE. Financing was signed on 8 May 2025 at MAD 6.5 billion, with Acciona holding 50%, Green of Africa 45% and AfriquiaGaz 5%, and the plant draws about 47% of a 360 MW wind farm.

Project record
Sources and notes

Sources: the Abu Dhabi offtaker’s statistical report and ACWA Power on Taweelah4 7; Al Jazeera on the Ras Al Khair suspension29; Acciona on the Casablanca financing, shareholding and partnership contract with ONEE12; the Moroccan embassy in the United States on the two phases.30

Technologies & costs

Gulf desalination tariffs fell from just over US$0.53 a cubic metre for Rabigh 3 in 2018 to US$0.28 for the Hassyan bid of 2020. MEED attributed the fall to energy efficiency, historically low interest rates, economies of scale and more cost-effective plant configurations, a stack of incremental gains rather than a breakthrough. Low-priced renewables, MEED added, explained the reduction at Taweelah and Hassyan.31 Each is worth understanding separately.

Membranes and energy recovery

Energy recovery devices and high-efficiency pumps have pushed electricity use down. The lowest verified figure in the region, 2.271 kWh a cubic metre recognised by Guinness World Records in March 2021, was set on a 5,000 cubic metre a day mobile unit at Jubail rather than on a large plant, which is the distinction most reporting drops.32

Large-plant numbers are the ones to bid against: Jubail 3A at under 2.80 kWh a cubic metre, and Shuaiba Phase 5 measured at 2.34 overall and 1.7 during salt separation.33 5

Scale, and where it stops helping

MEED argued in early 2022 that little more was to be gained from economies of scale, given the size plants had already reached.31

Scale also concentrates risk. A single plant of about 900,000 cubic metres a day, such as Taweelah, concentrates supply risk in a system where even the UAE’s storage target would cover only two days of national demand under normal conditions.3 Israel proved the point in late August 2026, when one algal bloom took five of six plants offline at once.17

Renewable power, and who owns it

Jubail 3A runs a 45.5 MW array supplying about a fifth of its electricity,33 and Saudi Arabia’s Khafji solar plant, 60,000 cubic metres a day from 2018, is still on the offtaker’s register with a 2053 retirement date.6

Among the schemes cited here, Morocco’s Casablanca plant has the largest disclosed renewable share: its developer says it will be powered entirely by renewable energy, from a wind farm.12 Jordan’s carrier has a 281 MWp captive solar plant providing about 27% of project energy and avoiding some 260,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent a year.28

Intake, outfall and brine

Brine remains the unpriced externality: about 1.5 units are produced for every unit of water, 141.5 million cubic metres a day globally against 95.37 million of water, and the tariff prices only the water.2

The basin-scale evidence is more reassuring than the headlines. Modelling of the Gulf puts desalination at 2.3% of average daily net evaporation today, about 4% by 2030 and roughly 8% by 2050, and concludes that basin-scale salinity increases are unlikely to exceed 1 practical salinity unit; near-field impacts are another matter, and the Strait of Hormuz does the flushing.34 Lender-financed projects now publish outfall modelling: the Jordanian carrier’s diffusers are modelled to keep salinity less than 2% above ambient at 100 metres, on a brine stream of about 400 million cubic metres a year.28

Conversion rather than replacement

Some of the largest new capacity is an old plant re-equipped. Saudi Arabia’s Shuaibah 3 conversion, 600,000 cubic metres a day commissioned in 2025 in place of an 880,000 cubic metre a day thermal plant whose life ended that year, is recorded as the largest thermal-to-reverse-osmosis conversion yet done.6

Retirement dates are published, which makes the replacement market forecastable: Khobar 3 leaves service in 2027, Marafiq in 2030, Ras Al Khair’s reverse-osmosis train in 2049 and its thermal train in 2050.6

Digital operation and maintenance, and smaller plants

Membrane-health analytics and fouling prediction can help reduce chemical use and optimise membrane replacement.35

Not every new plant is a giga-project. Oman plans the Dhofar Water 2030 IWP at Raysut, of about 80,000 cubic metres a day for operation around 2030,36 while Bahrain is planning a 10 million gallon a day brackish-water reverse-osmosis plant at Hamala.37

Energy & the water–energy nexus

In this region, water and energy are the same industry. Much of the Gulf’s thermal fleet sits in co-generation facilities that produce power and water together.38 In Oman and Abu Dhabi a single public buyer procures both water and power, while Saudi Arabia has a separate principal water offtaker, Sharakat.4 6 Even the modern reverse-osmosis plants that replaced them are large industrial electricity consumers.

That coupling cuts both ways. It ties drinking water to fuel supply and to the carbon intensity of the grid, and with little water stored against supply disruptions, a power problem soon becomes a water problem.3 It also makes desalination a candidate load for cheap renewable electricity, since plants run continuously. For the engineering costs behind bid models, see Voutchkov (2018).39

  • Energy intensity: measured large reverse-osmosis plants use roughly 2.3 to 3 kWh/m³, whereas MSF and MED use about 1.5 to 3.5 kWh/m³ of electricity plus about 38 kWh/m³ of thermal input, with higher figures cited for some configurations40
  • Renewable-linked plants: 281 MWp on Jordan's carrier at 27% of project energy, 45.5 MW at Jubail 3A at about 20%, and wind rather than solar in Morocco
  • Flexible operation: plants that ramp with solar output, using product-water storage as the buffer
  • Green hydrogen: electrolysis needs ultrapure water, putting desalination into the hydrogen supply chain
  • Waste-heat reuse and hybrid thermal and reverse-osmosis configurations at existing co-generation sites
Sources and notes

Energy intensities are published on different conventions, and thermal figures in particular vary with whether heat is counted as electrical equivalent. Industrial and process water, meaning cooling water and oil-and-gas produced water, is covered in the Utilities & Urban Water hub.

Standards & regulation

The reference points a developer prices against:

RegulationStatusYearNote
WHO Guidelines for Drinking-water QualityIn force2026Product-water quality benchmark (fourth edition incorporating the first, second and third addenda).
IFC/World Bank Group EHS Guidelines for Water and SanitationIn force2007Brine treatment and disposal guidance; discharge requirements follow national and local rules.
National offtaker specifications (Sharakat / EWEC / Nama PWP)In force—Tariff, availability and water-quality schedules in each RFP.
Environmental impact assessment codesIn force—National EIA rules govern intakes, outfalls and construction.

Indicative reference list; each procurement defines its own binding schedules.

Economics

This sector produces the cleanest price signal in water: a single levelised tariff, competitively set and often made public at bid or award. The headline tariff fell by nearly half from the 2018 Rabigh 3 bid to the 2020 Hassyan bid, which was never financed; on awards the fall was nearly a third, to the US$0.365 a cubic metre at which Hassyan was re-let in 2023, with a 30-year purchase agreement signed that October and financial close in April 2024.41 42 The latest prices, Saadiyat’s 2024 bid, Ras Mohaisen in 2025 and Bahrain’s Hidd bid in 2026, sit at about US$0.73 to 0.77. Both halves of that story are in the series below.43 26

The winning price of desalinated water, by year

US$ per cubic metre, quoted levelised water tariff at bid, preferred-bidder or award stage

the race to the bottomand back up again$0.530Rabigh 3 IWP$0.490Taweelah RO IWP$0.277Hassyan IWP (bid never financed)$0.424Jubail 3B IWP$0.365Hassyan IWP (re-award)$0.486Jubail 4 & 6 IWP$0.765Ras Mohaisen IWP$0.00$0.15$0.30$0.45$0.60$0.75$0.9020182019202020212022202320242025awardedbid or preferred bidderlowest price each year$0$0.45$0.902018 · Rabigh 3 IWP$0.5302019 · Shuqaiq 3 IWP$0.5202019 · Taweelah RO IWP$0.4902020 · Jubail 3A IWP$0.4132020 · Hassyan IWP (bidnever financed)$0.2772021 · Jubail 3B IWP$0.4242023 · Mirfa 2 RO IWP$0.4832023 · Rabigh 4 IWP$0.4582023 · Hassyan IWP(re-award)$0.3652024 · Saadiyat RO IWP$0.7312024 · Jubail 4 & 6 IWP$0.4862025 · Ras Mohaisen IWP$0.765
Sources and notes

Procurer announcements and contemporaneous trade reporting. Filled markers are award prices; hollow markers are bid or preferred-bidder prices (hover for the stage and date). Prices are not strictly comparable: they differ in tenor, indexation, power supply and site conditions. They are nonetheless the closest thing the market has to a public price series.

One number on that chart needs a warning. Dubai took a bid of US$0.277 per m³ at Hassyan in September 2020, still the lowest ever recorded anywhere.44 The winner never reached financial close, the contract did not survive, and the same site was re-let in 2023 at US$0.365, on an alternative proposal for a plant half as large again as the one that set the record. No water has ever been produced at the record price. Abu Dhabi’s Saadiyat award letter followed in February 2025 at about 73 US cents, and Bahrain’s first independent water project drew a lowest bid of about US$0.73 in July 2026.45 26 The market is priced at about 2.6 times its own record.43

Disclosed desalination award value by year

Sum of published contract values in the awards log, including combined power-and-water (IWPP) contracts, US$ billion

20031.91 bn20040.72 bn20051.87 bn20070.16 bn20081.47 bn20090.34 bn20100.53 bn20110.63 bn20124.36 bn20133.16 bn20140.49 bn20157.2 bn20161.8 bn20171.92 bn20182.62 bn20190.81 bn20201.67 bn20211.9 bn20223.92 bn20233.33 bn202412.61 bn20255.69 bn20264.82 bn

42 further awards in this sector have no value recorded in our register and are not in the chart.

The other structural shift is who bids. The Public Investment Fund raised its stake in ACWA Power to 50% in 202046 and held 44.16% after the listing, on the company’s 2025 annual report,47 while Abu Dhabi’s L’imad, through Abu Dhabi Power Corporation, completed its buyout of TAQA in August 2026, with delisting subject to regulatory approval.48 In both cases the bidder’s balance sheet is in large part a sovereign one.

Outside the Gulf, Jordan’s National Carrier project has development-bank financing,28 Morocco’s Casablanca plant has Spanish export-credit support,12 and Egypt’s desalination programme was still in tendering on 22 September 2026.49 Bahrain is the clearest boundary case: gross government debt of over 133% of GDP in 2024 on the IMF’s figure,50 and a first independent water project bid at about 2.6 times Dubai’s record for a plant half its size.26

Sources and notes

Full series, with the source for every award, on the tariffs and cost benchmarks page. Hollow markers on the chart are bids or preferred-bidder prices rather than awards; the 2020 Hassyan bid was never financed. The economics are examined in full in the finance case study.

Key organisations

The bodies that commission, regulate or deliver in this sector, and the names that recur across its tenders.

Mandates, procurement routes and the rest of the region’s institutions are in the decision-maker directory.

Business opportunities

Where the near-term money is:

Saudi Sharakat pipeline

A rolling programme of IWPs and water transmission projects, with prequalification rounds most years.

North African build-out

Morocco's coastal programme and Algeria's seven further plants planned for 2025 to 2030 need EPC, membranes and O&M.

Retrofit and O&M

The ageing thermal fleet is being converted or replaced; long-term O&M and membrane supply are annuity markets.

Solar-desal integration

Desalination projects increasingly integrate solar PV, as Jubail 3A does with 45 MW.

Jordan's AAWDC

Construction from 2026 opens subcontracting in marine works, pipelines and pumping.

Source for the solar integration card: MEED, 15 September 2025.51

Major projects Pipeline & awards

Where the investment is heading

Follow the capital and you can read the future of Middle East water. Desalination, long the Gulf's answer to scarcity, is in an investment phase defined by two forces: the cost of the water and the scrutiny of the carbon.

Costs fell hard because of scale, cheap debt and cheap solar rather than membranes alone. The record-low tariffs of 2018 to 2020 in the UAE and Saudi Arabia set new benchmarks for desalinated-water costs. They have since risen again, and the bid-price series shows both halves of that story.

The capital stack has broadened. Sovereign wealth funds are large owners of leading developers, the Public Investment Fund in ACWA Power and L'imad in TAQA; development banks and climate funds back the schemes that cut carbon or serve adaptation goals; and public-private partnerships spread construction and operating risk to private operators under long-term offtake.

The direction of travel is renewable-linked reverse osmosis at ever-larger scale, brine management and efficiency technology, and markets beyond the Gulf. Algeria and Morocco are already building at scale, Iraq broke ground at Basra in 2025, and Egypt is the one large programme still stuck between announcement and award.

Outlook

Expect capacity to keep compounding through Gulf replacement cycles, the North African build-out and, around 2030, Jordan’s carrier. Saudi Arabia alone plans to move from 11.41 to 16.25 million cubic metres a day of capacity serving urban demand between 2025 and 2031, with Ras Al Khair 2 and 3 in planning.6 Egypt’s programme is the open question: 21 plants totalling about 3.3 million cubic metres a day were announced for a first phase in December 2022 and the procurement was still being relaunched in late 2025,52 so treat it as an expectation rather than a record.

Three questions will shape the market. How fast renewable-coupled plants become the default, and on whose balance sheet the renewables sit. Whether brine regulation tightens: basin-scale modelling is reassuring, while the Aqaba-Amman project’s routine-discharge model predicts less than a 2% salinity increase 100 metres from the diffusers and is being supplemented for non-routine scenarios.34 28 And whether record-low tariffs survive higher interest rates, which the recent bid series suggests they have not. Desalination is no longer the expensive last resort; it is the region’s marginal source of new water, and it is priced on that basis.

One risk is newly concrete. In early 2026, strikes and debris damaged desalination facilities at Fujairah F1 in the UAE and Doha West in Kuwait, both of which kept operating, and a plant on Iran’s Qeshm Island was reported out of service a month after the attack it suffered.3 53 For systems that hold days of storage, that is a supply question rather than a security one.

Further reading

Standing references for this sector.

Sources

53 references
  1. European Commission, EU Blue Economy Observatory: desalination, accessed September 2026.
  2. Jones, E. et al. (2019), “The state of desalination and brine production: a global outlook”, Science of the Total Environment 657, doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.12.076. The standard global census of plants and brine volumes.
  3. Michel, D., “Could Iran disrupt the Gulf countries’ desalinated water supplies?”, CSIS, 19 March 2026.
  4. Emirates Water and Electricity Company, Statistical Report 2024.
  5. Arab News, “Saudi Arabia leads world with 16m cubic meters of desalination capacity”, 14 June 2026, reporting the National Transformation Programme’s 2025 annual report.
  6. Sharakat (Saudi Water Partnership Company), 7 Year Statement 2025–2031, March 2026.
  7. ACWA Power, Taweelah RO desalination IWP.
  8. Embassy of Algeria in Kuwait, “Thanks to major projects decided by President Tebboune, Algeria is making steady progress towards water security”.
  9. Sonatrach, “Atteinte de la pleine capacité de la station de dessalement d’eau de mer de Tighremt”, 1 December 2025.
  10. Horizons (Algiers), “How desalination reshaped Algeria in 2025”, December 2025.
  11. Ministry of Water Resources (Algeria), seawater desalination (Arabic), accessed October 2026.
  12. Acciona, “Acciona signs financing for the Casablanca desalination plant”, 8 May 2025.
  13. Yabiladi, “Cox to expand Agadir desalination plant and build 150 MW wind farm”, 29 July 2025.
  14. Mekorot, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Report 2024, 2025.
  15. The Times of Israel, “Desalination plant in central region goes into full operation”, 25 January 2026.
  16. IDE Technologies, the Sorek B (Sorek 2) desalination plant.
  17. The Times of Israel, “New masterplan needed after desalination shutdown underlines dangers of tech overreliance”, September 2026.
  18. The Jerusalem Post, “Government approves plan to boost desalinated water production”, 8 June 2026.
  19. Israel Water Authority, Israel’s Model for Water Management, presentation by Michael Zaide, Director of the Planning Division, February 2025 (copy hosted by a Catalan water users’ association).
  20. Iraq Business News, “Work starts at major seawater desalination project in Basra”, 26 July 2025.
  21. AGBI, “Iraq starts work on $4bn seawater desalination plant”, 25 July 2025.
  22. Smart Water Magazine, “The sovereign desalination map: why governments are taking back ownership”, 29 May 2026.
  23. Smart Water Magazine, “PowerChina subsidiary wins $1.32 billion contract for Iraq desalination pipeline”.
  24. Oxford Business Group, Bahrain 2024 report, energy and utilities.
  25. Saudi Gulf Projects, “EWA receives bids for Bahrain’s Hidd Independent Water Project”, March 2026.
  26. MEED, “Frontrunner emerges for Bahrain’s Hidd IWP”, 6 July 2026.
  27. Libya Observer, “Dbeibah addresses Libya’s water desalination challenges”, 11 July 2024.
  28. IFC, Aqaba-Amman water desalination and conveyance, environmental and social review summary, 17 October 2025.
  29. Al Jazeera, “Saudi Arabia suspends $2bn sale of desalination plant”, 26 July 2021.
  30. Embassy of Morocco in the United States, “Crown Prince launches construction of Africa’s largest seawater desalination plant”.
  31. MEED, “Desalination tariffs and the race to the bottom”, 28 January 2022.
  32. PR Newswire for the Saline Water Conversion Corporation, announcement of a Guinness World Record at 2.271 kWh per cubic metre, 5 April 2021.
  33. ACWA Power, inauguration of the Jubail 3A IWP, 3 June 2023.
  34. Paparella, F., D’Agostino, D. and Burt, J.A. (2022), “Long-term, basin-scale salinity impacts from desalination in the Arabian/Persian Gulf”, Scientific Reports, full text via PubMed Central.
  35. DuPont, “DuPont launches AI-enabled digital advisor to help customers optimize the operations of reverse osmosis water treatment systems”, 23 April 2026.
  36. Smart Water Magazine, “Oman plans two new water projects to address future supply shortfalls”, 17 March 2026.
  37. Electricity and Water Authority (Bahrain), Hamala reverse osmosis water production plant.
  38. IEA, “Desalinated water affects the energy equation in the Middle East”, January 2019.
  39. Voutchkov, N. (2018), Desalination Project Cost Estimating and Management, CRC Press.
  40. World Nuclear Association, nuclear desalination, which gives thermal and electrical inputs separately and notes the figures are not properly comparable.
  41. Saudi Gulf Projects, “DEWA and ACWA Power sign agreements for $914m Hassyan sea water desalination project”, 3 October 2023: 30-year water purchase agreement at US$0.36536/m³.
  42. Smart Water Magazine, “DEWA and ACWA Power reach financial close for Hassyan IWP”, 18 April 2024.
  43. Winning bid tariffs at award, from procurer announcements. The full series with sources is on our tariffs & cost benchmarks page.
  44. Government of Dubai Media Office, announcement of the Hassyan independent water project tariff, 3 September 2020.
  45. MEED, “Acciona receives Saadiyat IWP award letter”, 27 February 2025.
  46. ACWA Power, “The Public Investment Fund announces increase in stake in ACWA Power”, November 2020.
  47. Middle East Monitor, “From Aramco to ACWA Power: how Saudi Arabia is redrawing its map of energy influence”, 8 October 2026, citing ACWA Power’s 2025 annual report.
  48. The National, “Taqa to be delisted from ADX as Limad completes acquisition”, 26 August 2026.
  49. EnterpriseAM Egypt, “FinMin prepares USD 3 bn worth of projects across desalination, wastewater treatment, and electricity”, 22 September 2026.
  50. IMF, press release 25/391: IMF staff completes 2025 Article IV mission to the Kingdom of Bahrain, 24 November 2025.
  51. MEED, “Mena water sector attracts new developers”, 15 September 2025.
  52. EnterpriseAM Egypt, “Gov’t to relaunch stalled water desalination PPPs in December”, 21 September 2025.
  53. Matchett, G., “Attacks on desalination plants in the Iran war forecast a dark future”, Atlantic Council, 18 March 2026.

Numbered references are linked from the superscript markers in the text. Figures without a marker come from the sources above as compiled in the site methodology.

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