GE pumps funds into wastewater research

General Electric (GE) is boosting research into recycled water, banking on the US$5 billion global market growing even bigger.

As rapidly increasing demand for water strains supplies across the Middle East, GE has announced that it will increase research spending on waste water filtration systems by 50 per cent, including at new research centres in Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The US technology conglomerate has long been a major supplier of power generation equipment in the region, but now sees wastewater and water re-use systems as two of the “biggest opportunities” for growth, Steve Bolze, the head of the firm’s water and power equipment units, told Bloomberg.

GE, which has a number of business links to Mubadala Development, the strategic investment arm of the Abu Dhabi Government, will also conduct research on water technologies at an energy technology centre planned for Masdar City, the carbon-neutral development at the edge of the capital.

“We think it’s going to be a great business, not only in the US but in China,” said Jeffery Immelt, the chief executive of GE. “The entire Middle East is constrained so this is a problem that’s shared broadly.”

Experts say filtration and re-use of waste water for industry, irrigation and even household applications will receive more attention as rising consumption stretches the region’s water desalination capacity.

The International Energy Agency (IEA), a group of energy consuming nations that is based in Paris, predicts energy use will soar across the Middle East as demand for desalination doubles in the next 20 years. Of that new capacity, 70 per cent will be located in the Gulf states, Algeria and Libya, the IEA said.

The increasing amounts of energy used for desalination served as an incentive for greater use of recycled water, said Dieter Ernst, the chief executive of Berlinwasser, a German water company that operates a joint-venture firm in the UAE. “There’s a very strong link between energy consumption and water use,” Mr Ernst said. “The main question is what to do with it in the re-use cycle.”

Residents, he said, “are not so aware that water is a resource”.

Demand for water in Abu Dhabi is expected to double by 2030, according to a forecast presented last week by the Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company.

Faced with rising demand, the Government has moved to de-regulate the wastewater sector to encourage foreign investment and increase capacity for treatment and re-use of wastewater.

The emirate recycles 60 per cent of its water and has plans to increase the figure to 100 per cent, said Alan Thomson, the managing director of the Abu Dhabi Sewerage Services Company.

* with Bloomberg

cstanton@thenational.ae

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