Abu Dhabi commits 300 billion dirhams to a grid it expects to nearly double by 2035

Three hundred billion dirhams by 2035 is about 30 billion a year for ten years. The department also gives the total as $81.7 billion, roughly thirteen times the capital in the $6 billion round-the-clock solar-and-battery plant Masdar says will be the world's largest when it finishes in 2027 ^{[4][21][1][2]}. The Semafor interview gives the total only, with no split between generation, storage and water ^[22].

Al Jarwan named three sources of the load: a growing population, industrial expansion and AI infrastructure ^[3]. He did not weight them. August set an all-time high for electricity use in the emirate even with residents away for the summer ^[1].

Part of the new load is water. Gulf desalination has mostly run on thermal plants that boil seawater with waste heat from gas-fired generation, while reverse osmosis takes electricity from any source ^[15]. Abu Dhabi wants nearly all its desalination on reverse osmosis by 2035, against around a quarter in 2022, about three-quarters of the system changing technology in thirteen years ^[16][5]. Desalination is the UAE's main source of fresh water ^[13], so that switch turns a large block of water production into grid demand.

Clean energy including nuclear rose from 1% to 47% of Abu Dhabi's power mix in the last ten years, Al Jarwan said ^[12]. Holding 47% while demand nearly doubles means clean generation nearly doubles too ^[2][4]. His route is 3 GW of solar a year in Abu Dhabi plus round-the-clock battery storage, on a national base of about 6.7 GW installed ^[11]. That comes to 30 GW over the decade, some 4.5 times what stands today ^[3].

The resilience case has already been tested in the field. The UAE was the Gulf country most heavily targeted by Iranian drones and missiles in the early months of the war, and Al Jarwan said that was a major test for power and water suppliers ^[6]. A drone hit the Barakah plant in May without causing a leak or major disruption; the plant supplies about a quarter of the country's electricity and was built to withstand the impact of a large commercial aircraft ^[9][10]. "I think it's a privilege that we managed to test our system under real disruption in real time, and we perform[ed]," he said ^[7], adding that services were not interrupted during the conflict ^[8].

In December, Abu Dhabi co-hosts the UN Water Conference with Senegal alongside the Department of Energy's first Water and Power Week, which expects more than 25,000 visitors ^[20]. Al Jarwan, who has been to the US, China, Europe and Singapore in recent months meeting counterparts ^[17], said "it's all about us differentiating the Abu Dhabi system from other systems" ^[18].

Two outcomes would show the money went into meeting load without changing its source. A clean share below 47% in 2035 with installed capacity far higher ^[12]. Reverse osmosis still near a quarter of desalination in 2030, five years from the target date ^[16].