HE Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, MD & CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA), met with HE Masagos Zulkifli, Minister of Environment and Water Resources of Singapore. A high-level delegation headed by Al Tayer visited Singapore to promote joint relations and exchange of best global experiences and practices in renewable & clean energy and sustainability.
The meeting was attended by Dr Yousef Al Akraf, Executive Vice President of Business Support and Human Resources at DEWA, and DEWA officials.
During the meeting, Al Tayer focused on strengthening cooperation frameworks with the Singapore Ministry of Environment and Water Resources and the strategic cooperation between DEWA and institutions and companies in the water and energy sector in Singapore, and production, transportation, distribution, renewable energy, energy efficiency projects, and digital transformation.
Al Tayer briefed Zulkifli on DEWA’s key projects, initiatives, and programmes to achieve the vision of the wise leadership, where DEWA’s strategy is aligned with UAE Centennial 2071, UAE Vision 2021, and Dubai Plan 2021 to ensure a sustainable, happy future and support the UAE to be number one in all areas.
Dubai has been a pioneer in implementing programmes and initiatives that help reduce the carbon footprint, such as launching the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, the largest single-site solar park in the world, based on the Independent Power Producer model, with a projected capacity of 5,000 megawatts by 2030. The solar park will contribute to achieving the objectives of the Dubai Clean Energy Strategy 2050 to make Dubai the city with the lowest carbon footprint in the world.
Al Tayer talked about DEWA’s water projects to increase productivity, improve operational efficiencies, and increase the flow of water. DEWA has established smart meters and networks to build a smart water-distribution-management system. This is part of its strategy to manage increasing demand for its services, and upgrade its services to the highest levels of efficiency, reliability and availability.
Al Tayer also discussed DEWA’s benchmarking and global competitiveness indicators where it succeeded in establishing a culture of innovation in all its departments and divisions. The UAE, represented by DEWA, has maintained its first global ranking for the second consecutive year, with scores of 100% in all Getting Electricity indicators in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2019 report. The report measures the ease of doing business in 190 economies around the world. DEWA achieved competitive results in global benchmarking, surpassing the private sector and major European and American utilities in efficiency and reliability. It has done this by raising the efficiency of generating power by using the latest technologies, and adopting technological innovations to reduce losses from electricity transmission and distribution networks to 3.3% compared to 6 – 7% in the USA and Europe. DEWA also achieved the lowest customer minutes lost per year (CML) in the world of 2.39 CML compared to 15 minutes in Europe.
Al Tayer also added that DEWA managed to decrease water network losses from 42% in 1988 to 6.5% in 2018, compared to 15% in North America, which is one of the best results in the world. DEWA continues its efforts to upgrade Dubai’s entire water network by replacing old connections with new ones, replacing water meters, and developing new transmission and distribution networks that conform to the highest international standards.
