Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Starts Renewable Energy Desalination Project

Masdar, the renewable energy company run by Abu Dhabi’s government, will begin a pilot project to desalinate water using power from renewable sources with the aim of building a full-scale plant by 2020.

The company will join with private partners in three test plants to study new desalination technologies, Masdar Chief Executive Officer Sultan Al-Jaber said today at a news conference in Abu Dhabi.

Masdar and its partners will test different technologies at the plants through 2015, with the aim of starting construction on a commercial desalination facility in 2016, he said. The full-scale facility may have capacity to treat 50 million to 100 million gallons of water a day.

Middle Eastern states including the United Arab Emirates, of which Abu Dhabi is the capital, rely on treatment plants to remove salt from seawater to make it drinkable. Al Jaber said Masdar still needs to choose the pilot project partners and would then develop estimates for the cost of the plants.

To contact the reporter on this story: Anthony DiPaola in Dubai at adipaola@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Stephen Voss at sev@bloomberg.net