• Taweelah is the world’s largest standalone SWRO plant and has begun exporting 230,000m3/day of the planned 909,200m3/day of water

Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power, which is a leading developer, investor, and operator of power generation, desalinated water, and green hydrogen plants worldwide, has successfully launched the Taweelah SWRO to deliver its first water into the Abu Dhabi network.

The Taweelah Desalination Company opened the valve, connecting the plant with the distribution network and began exporting the first 230,000m3/day of the planned 909,200m3/day of water.

The Taweelah SWRO is the world’s largest standalone sea water reverse osmosis plant. The plant is expected to progressively come on line and reach full capacity within 2022.

The Taweelah plant sets new benchmarks for its size, efficiency and cost of water produced. Supplying 909,200 m3/day, it will be 44% larger than the world’s current largest reverse osmosis plant.

The Taweelah IWP

ACWA Power and Natixis had previously announced that the Taweelah IWP obtained the first-ever “sustainable loan” qualification for a water desalination project globally.

Closed in September 2019, the $758mn project finance loan, with a contractual tenor of 32.4 years, will finance what will become the largest reverse osmosis plant in the world when completed in 2022.

Vigeo Eiris, which provided an independent second party opinion on the sustainability credentials and management of this project finance loan, confirmed that it is aligned with the four components of both the Green Loan Principles (published by the LMA in 2018) and the Social Bond Principles (published by the ICMA in 2018, and used in this case in the absence of published Social Loan Principles).

Natixis acted as initial mandated lead arranger, documentation bank, hedge provider, global facility agent and sustainable loan coordinator.

This project finance loan is dedicated to the financing of the design, construction, operation and maintenance of a state-of-the-art, 200 million imperial gallons per day reserve osmosis plant and associated infrastructure and facilities.

The plant will be constructed in the existing Taweelah complex, in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. The project also includes a 68 MW peak photovoltaic power plant to complement the energy supply from the procurer’s grid.

ACWA Power is the lead developer and operator of the project and a 40% shareholder, with the remaining 60% contributed by the Government of Abu Dhabi through Abu Dhabi Power Corporation and Mubadala Development Company PJSC.

The tariff offered by ACWA Power for the Al Taweelah IWP was the lowest achieved to date in the world for desalinated water.

The project, when constructed, will also set another world record by utilizing the lowest amount of energy per gallon of desalinated water produced.

The plant will play a vital role in catering to Abu Dhabi’s peak water demand, which is expected to rise by 11% between 2017 and 2024.