Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (Dewa) is requesting proposals for an early-stage feasibility study on producing electricity from geothermal energy and its use in desalination – removing salt from water to make it potable.
Geothermal energy from beneath the Earth’s surface, the heat that creates hot springs, needs to be at temperatures of more than 200°C to be a prime candidate for power generation. The UAE’s temperatures are much lower than this, making geothermal more suitable for applications such as desalination rather than power generation, according to experts.
Steve Griffiths, the vice president for research at Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Institute, which has been studying the potential for geothermal in the UAE, said that using this kind of energy for desalination was the most viable option, as the GCC’s geothermal resources were only suitable for low-temperature applications, averaging about 100°C.