ACWA and Veolia Strengthen Partnership to Advance Desalination Efficiency and Water Security
Saudi-listed ACWA has signed a memorandum of understanding with Veolia, a global leader in environmental services and water technologies, to deepen cooperation on the development, design and operation of seawater desalination facilities. The agreement brings together two major players in the global water sector and establishes a framework for improving desalination performance across the full value chain, from early-stage plant design and equipment selection to chemical management, water-quality monitoring and day-to-day operations.
Signed in Paris, France, the memorandum reflects the growing importance of desalination as countries seek to secure reliable water supplies while reducing the energy consumption, operating costs and environmental footprint associated with producing freshwater from seawater.
ACWA is one of the world’s largest private water desalination companies and has built a substantial portfolio of water and energy infrastructure projects in Saudi Arabia and international markets. Veolia brings extensive experience in water technologies, treatment processes and environmental services. Through the new collaboration, the companies plan to combine their technical capabilities and operational experience to identify further efficiency gains in existing and future seawater reverse osmosis, or SWRO, facilities.
The agreement is designed to address several interconnected areas of desalination performance. Rather than concentrating on a single technology or stage of the project lifecycle, the companies intend to examine opportunities across the complete chain of plant development and operation.
Energy efficiency will be one of the central priorities of the collaboration. Engineers and technical teams from ACWA and Veolia will work together to further refine plant operating strategies, facility designs and equipment selection with the objective of reducing the amount of electricity required to produce each cubic meter of freshwater.
Energy consumption remains one of the most important cost components of seawater desalination. While reverse osmosis technology has become significantly more efficient over recent decades, even relatively small reductions in electricity use can generate substantial savings when applied across facilities producing hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of water each day.
Under the agreement, the companies will assess opportunities to improve system performance throughout the desalination process. This could include optimizing how equipment is selected and configured, improving plant operating parameters and applying lessons from operational data to future facility designs. The collaboration is expected to support a continuous process of technical improvement as the partners seek to reduce power consumption without compromising water production capacity or quality.
Chemical optimization represents another major area of cooperation. Desalination plants rely on carefully managed chemical treatment programs to protect equipment, support water treatment processes and maintain reliable performance. Improving chemical consumption and dosing strategies can reduce operating expenses while also limiting the environmental impact associated with plant operations.
ACWA and Veolia plan to work on improved chemical management and dosing design across the facilities covered by their cooperation. The objective is to ensure that chemicals are used as efficiently as possible while maintaining the performance and reliability required for large-scale water infrastructure.
By reducing unnecessary consumption and improving treatment strategies, the companies aim to lower the overall cost of water production and strengthen the sustainability performance of desalination plants. The approach reflects the broader industry trend toward using more precise monitoring and data-driven operating practices to improve resource efficiency.
A third pillar of the agreement focuses on water-quality enhancement. The companies intend to apply advanced monitoring technologies, improved treatment methods and real-time assurance protocols to strengthen the management of water quality while facilities are operating.
Real-time monitoring is becoming increasingly important in large-scale water treatment infrastructure. Continuous operational data can enable plant operators to identify changes in system performance earlier and respond more quickly to changing conditions. Advanced monitoring can also support more consistent treatment processes and help operators maintain water-quality standards across large production volumes.
The collaboration between ACWA and Veolia is expected to combine technical expertise in treatment technologies with operational experience from some of the world’s largest desalination facilities. The partners will seek to improve the way performance is monitored and managed during plant operations while supporting high standards of reliability and water quality.
The agreement will also draw on Veolia’s design capabilities, technical expertise and operational best practices to support improvements across ACWA’s existing fleet of desalination assets. The companies aim to raise overall plant efficiency and further strengthen operational excellence at individual facilities.
This aspect of the collaboration recognizes that desalination performance is influenced by decisions made throughout a project’s lifecycle. Design choices affect future operating requirements, while procurement decisions influence equipment performance and maintenance needs. Chemical management, monitoring systems and operating strategies can all contribute to the total cost and energy intensity of water production.
By examining these elements together, ACWA and Veolia intend to identify opportunities that may not be visible when individual stages of a project are considered separately.
Raad Al-Saady, Managing Director of ACWA, said the agreement reflects lessons gained from the companies’ previous work on high-efficiency desalination projects.
“Between ACWA and Veolia, we have built the most efficient desalination plants in the world, and the lesson those projects taught is that the last increments of cost are rarely sitting in one easily identifiable place and are rather spread across design, procurement, chemistry and operation,” Al-Saady said.
“This is why we have written this agreement to cover the whole chain instead of the single stage that happens to be easiest to measure.”
His comments highlight the increasingly detailed approach required to achieve additional efficiency improvements in mature desalination technologies. Major technological advances can deliver substantial improvements, but once systems have reached high levels of efficiency, further reductions in energy use and costs often depend on incremental improvements across multiple aspects of plant design and operation.
Anne Le Guennec, Director of the Water Technologies Zone at Veolia, said the partnership would support efforts to preserve water resources and strengthen environmental security.
“Through this agreement, thanks to our advanced water technologies, we are offering concrete and effective solutions to renew and preserve water resources,” she said.
“In Saudi Arabia, environmental security, which we build every day with our partners, depends on our collective ability to preserve every drop of water. Here, alongside ACWA, we are accelerating the excellent work carried out for more than 10 years to revolutionize the desalination model.”
Le Guennec added that Veolia would continue to deploy its technologies and expertise in support of essential infrastructure, competitiveness and the strategic autonomy of the region.
The potential impact of relatively small efficiency improvements becomes clearer when applied to large-scale desalination plants. Four ACWA facilities in Saudi Arabia — Rabigh 3, Rabigh 4, Jazlah and Shuaibah 3 — each have water production capacity of approximately 600,000 cubic meters per day.
At this scale, a reduction of just one-tenth of a kilowatt-hour of electricity per cubic meter of water produced could reduce annual power consumption by roughly 22 GWh at a single facility. Such savings demonstrate why incremental efficiency improvements can become financially and environmentally significant when multiplied across large production volumes.
The companies also expect the principles developed through the collaboration to have applications beyond Saudi Arabia. ACWA is developing additional desalination capacity in international markets, including a planned Caspian Sea facility in Azerbaijan with capacity of approximately 300,000 cubic meters per day and the Grand Côte project in Senegal, which is expected to provide desalination capacity of around 400,000 cubic meters per day.
As ACWA expands its international water portfolio, technical improvements and operational lessons developed in one market could potentially be applied to facilities in other regions. This creates an opportunity to transfer experience between projects while adapting solutions to local operating conditions and water requirements.
Water security is a particularly important strategic issue for Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom relies heavily on desalination to meet municipal water demand, while rising population and economic activity continue to increase pressure on available water resources. Groundwater resources are limited, making reliable seawater desalination infrastructure central to the country’s long-term water strategy.
Saudi Arabia’s broader Vision 2030 program emphasizes the importance of improving infrastructure efficiency, strengthening environmental sustainability and supporting economic resilience. In the water sector, this includes reducing the cost and environmental impact of freshwater production while maintaining reliable supply for communities and industry.
ACWA currently operates Saudi desalination capacity totaling approximately 4.1 million cubic meters per day. The scale of this portfolio makes operational efficiency particularly significant, as improvements in energy use, chemical consumption and plant performance can have an impact across millions of cubic meters of daily water production.
The memorandum of understanding with Veolia does not commit either company to a specific volume of new desalination capacity, and the agreement is non-exclusive. Instead, it establishes a structured framework for continued technical cooperation.
The work program is expected to involve named technical leads from both organizations and a review process covering ongoing and future development of seawater reverse osmosis facilities. The structure is intended to support regular collaboration, rapid responses to operational challenges and the exchange of technical knowledge as projects progress.
Project delivery is also included within the scope of the cooperation. Building on previous work between the two companies, the agreement calls for closer coordination, mutual responsiveness and a solutions-oriented approach to resolving issues that arise during project execution and operations.
The emphasis on maintaining project schedules reflects the importance of reliable delivery in large-scale water infrastructure. Desalination projects require coordination across engineering, procurement, construction, commissioning and long-term operations. Greater technical collaboration between project partners may help address challenges more quickly and support the completion of facilities according to planned timelines.
As demand for secure and sustainable water supplies continues to increase across water-stressed regions, the ability to make desalination more energy-efficient and cost-effective is likely to become increasingly important. The new agreement between ACWA and Veolia positions the companies to continue building on more than a decade of cooperation while seeking further improvements across the design, development and operation of large-scale desalination infrastructure.
By focusing on the entire desalination value chain rather than a single component, the partnership aims to capture incremental improvements that can collectively produce meaningful results. For countries increasingly dependent on seawater desalination, even small reductions in energy consumption and operating costs can have significant long-term implications for water affordability, infrastructure sustainability and energy demand.
The collaboration therefore represents not only an extension of the relationship between ACWA and Veolia, but also a broader effort to advance the operating model for large-scale seawater desalination as water security becomes an increasingly important economic, environmental and strategic priority.
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