ABU DHABI’s Water and Electricity Authority (ADWEA) is reportedly planning to build the world’s largest water desalination plant.^[1] The facility will produce 757,000 cubic metres of water per day and will be located in the country’s Al Taweelah region, halfway between the cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai. ADWEA will retain a 60 percent stake in the project, which will be developed in partnership with the private sector.

SPANISH officials plan to install new desalination capacity to ameliorate water scarcity for farmers and residents in Valencia. The Ministry of Agriculture and Environment has reportedly committed funds to double the capacity of the Torravieja desalination plant. Torrevieja is currently the largest desalination facility in Europe, with a capacity of 240,000 cubic metres per day.^[2]

EGYPT is set to build a mega-desalination plant to alleviate intensive drought. The Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi declared his intention to develop the facility last week.

The new facility is intended to reduce reliance on the River Nile’s waters, which may be adversely affected by the completion of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam—soon to become the largest hydroelectric dam in the continent.^[3] 

Egypt has historically claimed the majority of the flow of the Nile. The annual volume of water allocated to Egypt and Sudan in the 1959 Nile Waters Agreement stand at 55.5 billion cubic metres and 18.5 billion cubic metres respectively.

^{Credit: Desalination.biz}

SRI LANKA –  The Asian Development Bank (ABD) will lend $120 million to finance a desalination project that will supply SRI LANKA’s Jaffna Peninsula.^[4]   The ABD’s financial support will supplement the $90 million loan that the bank previously provided to the Jaffna project in 2010. The total cost of the project is estimated at $266 million.

The facility is scheduled to come online in 2025, and will provide 300,000 people with 24,000 cubic metres of water per day.^[5]