With tremendous progress achieved in terms of efficiency and footprint over the past 25 years, desalination became an essential part in the toolkit to face water scarcity.  It has become cheaper, more effective and increasingly scalable to meet the growing global demand, in terms of size, volume, and efficiency.

The desalination market is set to accelerate growth over the next 5 years, driven primarily by the Middle East, Pacific Asia and some countries in Europe, with the capacity planned for award representing ~40,000 MLD.

Already a leader in the desalination sector, with 18% of the world’s installed desalination capacity built using its technologies, Veolia is set to consolidate its market share while doubling its operated capacity from 1.4 Bm3 to 2.8 Bm3 by 2030.

Recent gains worldwide attest to Veolia’s strong ambitions in the desalination market as evidenced by the Mirfa 2 &Hassyan Desalination plants in the United Arab Emirates (2023 and 2024), the Cornwall Desalination plant in the United Kingdom (2023) and the exclusive discussions for Rabat Desalination plant in Morocco (2024).

With more than 50 years of continuous effort, Veolia has become the champion of sustainable desalination, driving major breakthroughs and innovation in the desalination market:

• Energy consumption divided by almost 7 since 1970
• Increasingly compact and efficient units, thanks to solutions such as the Barrel^TM technology (2019) and Intelligent Reverse osmosis processes integrating AI
• Minimisation of the environmental footprint of the facilities, by reducing chemicals usage and more renewable decarbonized power supply
• Respect of the marine environment, particularly when it comes to brine management.

Veolia continues to drive innovation in this field and fueling other water technologies, such as micropollutant treatment and wastewater management, creating synergies that address multiple water-related challenges at once.

“Our global leadership and ambitions in desalination, in line with our strategic GreenUp program, demonstrate our capability to develop increasingly innovative and adaptable technological solutions to meet the needs and challenges of territories and industrial players. It is our unique positioning and through our winning formula that combines expertise, performance and environmental responsibility that allows us to have even greater ambitions today to implement effective and more affordable solutions while preserving both this vital resource and local ecosystems”, says Estelle Brachlianoff, CEO of Veolia.