Policy & markets · Middle East
EWEC and Abu Dhabi's Solar Pipeline: Zarraf, Khazna and the 40 Percent Rule
Abu Dhabi's offtaker is procuring gigawatt-scale solar toward 10 GW by 2030 — under an ownership structure that caps the winning developer at 40 percent of the project.
Dubai gets the attention, but Abu Dhabi is procuring solar at comparable scale and under a materially different ownership model — one that anyone planning to develop in the emirate needs to understand before building a financial model.
The procurement is run by EWEC, the Emirates Water and Electricity Company, Abu Dhabi's single buyer for power and water. EWEC's stated strategy targets at least 10 GW AC of solar capacity in Abu Dhabi by 2030, and the pipeline reflects that.
The 40 percent rule
Start with the structure, because it is the feature most likely to surprise a developer arriving from another market.
In Abu Dhabi's IPP model, the successful developer or consortium owns up to 40 percent of the project entity. The remaining equity is held indirectly by the Abu Dhabi government. The project company then enters a long-term power purchase agreement with EWEC as offtaker.
That is a genuinely different proposition from a structure where the developer holds a majority and consolidates the asset. It changes the returns model, the governance, and what "winning" a project actually delivers to a bidder's balance sheet.
It is neither better nor worse in the abstract — a minority stake alongside a sovereign partner in a contracted asset is an attractive position for many investors — but it is different, and a model built on assumptions from a majority-ownership market will be wrong. It also explains part of why the same names keep appearing: this is a structure that suits large developers with the balance sheet to take a contracted minority position at scale.
Zarraf
The Zarraf Solar PV IPP sits in the Al Zarraf area of the Al Dhafra region, at 1,500 MW AC. EWEC issued a request for proposals to qualified companies, and the project has been reported as becoming Abu Dhabi's fifth utility-scale solar plant.
EWEC has cited output sufficient for approximately 160,000 homes and CO2 reduction of up to 2.4 million tonnes annually. Those are the offtaker's own framing figures rather than independently audited numbers, and we report them as such.
Khazna
The Khazna Solar PV project, also around 1.5 GW, was the emirate's fourth utility-scale solar development. Engie was reported as having submitted the lowest bid.
Khazna's location is the interesting part. It sits near a cluster of data centres, which places it at the intersection of two demand stories now converging across the Gulf: renewable build-out and computing load growth. That convergence is one we have examined from the Omani side in Oman's Green AI agenda, and it is likely to shape siting decisions across the region.
Large computing load is not like ordinary demand. It is continuous, it is concentrated, and its operators increasingly want a defensible story about the electricity behind it. Siting utility solar next to it is a procurement decision with a commercial narrative attached.
How Abu Dhabi fits the regional picture
Three Gulf offtakers now run gigawatt-scale solar procurement on broadly comparable cycles:
- SPPC in Saudi Arabia, through the National Renewable Energy Program — currently NREP Round 7.
- DEWA in Dubai, through the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park — currently Phase 7.
- EWEC in Abu Dhabi, through the pipeline described here.
The bidder lists overlap heavily. Masdar, ACWA Power, Engie, TotalEnergies and their peers contest all three. For a developer this is effectively one competitive market with three offtakers and three contract structures; for a supplier it means the same handful of consortia are the customers regardless of which flag flies over the project.
What differs, and what a newcomer must not assume transfers, is the contract structure and the equity position. Saudi, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are not interchangeable on those terms. Nor are the obligations attaching to an award: Saudi projects carry local content requirements the Emirati rounds do not replicate, and the smaller programmes differ again in Kuwait and Bahrain.
What a supplier should take from this
The route to the work is unchanged from the rest of this series, and it is worth repeating because it is the most common strategic error we see:
EWEC is not your customer. It contracts for output. Modules, inverters, trackers, transformers, balance of plant and construction are bought by the winning consortium and its EPC contractor.
So: watch the awards to know when buying decisions start, direct commercial effort at the likely winners rather than the offtaker, and have registration and technical eligibility in place beforehand — including the connection-side requirements set out in who approves a grid connection in the Gulf.
What to watch
- Award announcements on the live projects, naming the winning consortia.
- Tariffs, read against the benchmarks Abu Dhabi's earlier projects set.
- Whether storage attaches to future EWEC solar rounds as it has to Dubai's Phase 7.
- Further data centre siting, which may shape where the next projects go.
A note on sourcing
Arcnex has not seen EWEC's tender documentation. Capacities, structures and bidder details above come from EWEC announcements and established trade reporting, and figures attributed to EWEC are identified as such. If you are bidding or supplying, the tender documents are the authority.
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ANSWERS
Questions answered in this story
What is EWEC?
The Emirates Water and Electricity Company, Abu Dhabi's single buyer for power and water. It procures generation and desalination capacity from independent producers and contracts for their output, playing the role in Abu Dhabi that SPPC plays in Saudi Arabia and DEWA plays for its own projects in Dubai.
How much of the project does a winning developer own?
Up to 40 percent of the project entity. The remaining equity is held indirectly by the Abu Dhabi government, and the project company enters a long-term power purchase agreement with EWEC. This differs from structures in which a developer holds a majority.
What is the Zarraf project?
A 1,500 MW AC solar PV independent power project in the Al Zarraf area of the Al Dhafra region, reported as becoming Abu Dhabi's fifth utility-scale solar plant. EWEC has cited capacity sufficient for approximately 160,000 homes and CO2 reduction of up to 2.4 million tonnes annually.
What is the Khazna project?
An approximately 1.5 GW solar PV project in the Khazna area, near a cluster of data centres, and the emirate's fourth utility-scale solar development. Engie was reported as having submitted the lowest bid.
How does a supplier reach these projects?
Through the bidding consortia and their EPC contractors, not through EWEC. EWEC contracts for output; the project company procures equipment and construction.
