OREANDA-NEWS. October 30, 2014. Fostering a culture of technology-based entrepreneurship in the Kingdom to meet the increasing need for potable water.

This year Aramco Entrepreneurship Center (AEC) and GE’s innovation center “Ecomagination” launched a global competition in the area of seawater desalination, with a particular focus on using renewable energy. It has already attracted a wide variety of proposals, applying multidisciplinary fields from 32 countries with 108 proposals and more than 15,000 site visits.

The initiative received significant support from HE Abdulrahman Al-Ibrahim, the Governor of the state-owned Saline Water Conversion Corporation (SWCC), as well as from Saudi Aramco’s Power Systems organization.

Saudi Arabia has few natural water resources, and it depends upon an extensive infrastructure of costly and energy-intensive water desalination plants and rapidly depleting ground water reserves to meet its fast-growing water needs. The country is the world’s largest producer of desalinated water, pumping more than 1 billion cubic meters a year via nearly 2,000 miles of pipelines. Over 50 cities and distribution centers in Saudi Arabia receive their water from these plants.

Current desalination techniques are very energy intensive. Saudi Arabia is burning the equivalent of 1.5 million barrels per day of fuel to power its desalination processes. An increase in energy efficiency or a reduction in consumption is the key to ensuring that the country receives the most value for its natural resources.

The global competition addresses this critical area and potentially presents alternatives from key experts around the world to expand the technology options to consider for SWCC and other Kingdom-based organizations to develop, leverage and deploy in the future, empowering regional entrepreneurship.