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Veolia CEO says water tariffs have room to improve

8 April 2025

 

There is room for water desalination plant tariffs in the region and globally to come down further, according to Estelle Brachlianoff, CEO of French water solutions provider Veolia.

"There is still room for tariffs to come down from their current level," Brachlianoff told MEED on the sidelines of the firm's Middle East and North Africa sustainability forum for members of the media in Oman.

The tariff is the price an offtaker pays a private utility developer over a fixed period for the water produced daily in a desalination plant. Energy cost is the main input for tariffs, along with the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) and cost of capital.

Photo: RO membranes in Veolia's Barka 4 SWRO plant in Oman 

Brachlianoff said water desalination tariffs have dropped significantly in the past decade, from about $5 a cubic metre to under $0.5 a cubic metre in recent years, particularly in the Middle East and Gulf states.

She attributes this trend to an increase in activities related to adopting green energy and other sustainable sources of energy, and to digital tools.

"Innovations like Veolia's Barrel technology, which offers a modular approach to building desalination plants … contribute to more compact design, improving energy efficiency and land utilisation, so yes, prices can and will go down," she said.

The firm's Barrel technology is a self-contained, modular reverse osmosis (RO) unit with multiple capacity options. It employs continuous membrane monitoring connected to another proprietary digital analytics solution called Hubgrade.

Sur SWRO plant

Veolia's Sur seawater reverse osmosis (SWRO) plant in Oman uses the firm's Barrel technology and utilises solar power, making it one of the company's most energy-efficient assets globally.

According to MEED data, the Sur desalination plant is the first independent water project (IWP) in Oman and the GCC region. A consortium composed of Veolia subsidiary OTV and local firm Bahwan Engineering Company built the plant in 2007.

It is operated by Bahwan Veolia, a joint venture of Bahwan Engineering Company and Veolia.

The plant’s initial capacity was 80,000 cubic metres a day (cm/d), which was expanded by an additional 51,000 cm/d.

Veolia owns a 35.75% share in the project, with Oman’s National Power & Water Company holding 29.25%. The remaining equity is free floating on the Muscat Securities Exchange.

Veolia and its subsidiary, Sidem, recently won the contracts for two major SWRO plants in the UAE.

In May last year, Veolia won a $320m contract to engineer and supply technology for the Hassyan seawater desalination plant in Dubai. The plant is being developed by Saudi utility developer Acwa Power.

Sidem and Veolia will also undertake the EPC contract for the SR2.56bn ($682m) Hamriyah IWP project in the UAE emirate of Sharjah.

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Jennifer Aguinaldo

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