IDEA's 4th District Cooling Conference

Shafiq Khoori says DEWA has been one of the biggest supporters of district cooling.
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Michel Farah, regional director, UAE & Gulf

What are you expecting to get out of this event over the next two days?

Last year, when we attended, we found that the best talents and the best professionals working in the district cooling sector were present at the event. Although we’ve seen that the level of business is down, we know that everyone is interested in protecting their assets and gaining efficiency. We know that the economy has hit this business in particular, but a lot of tonnage has already been installed and this needs to be kept running efficiently. The original idea behind this concept was efficiency, and this needs to be maintained. Some of the players on the local authority side are missing, which is a shame as I think they would have gained a lot .

What advice could you give to government bodies?

One of the topics being discussed is the utility rate. Although DEWA is seeing the benefits of district cooling in terms of less power being used by the grid, the tariff structure is making the bigger producers pay more. Part of the initial proposal had been that companies who were more efficient would receive a better utility rate or incentive.

How do you see the market recovering?

With regard to building new plants, we’re seeing growth in Saudi Arabia. Dubai is maturing now, and is looking at better usage of the available resource. I see some benefits, personally, in connecting the grids together. We’ve seen some major projects recently, but because they were not connected to the grid, they couldn’t pick up from plants that had excess capacity.

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