Dubai – Mubasher: The emirate of Dubai plans to build its first solar-powered desalination plant in 2019, the CEO of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) said. 

The move comes along with the emirate’s plan to diversify away from burning fossil fuels to increase its water supply, Bloomberg News reported, citing Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer as saying.

The new plant will produce 120 million gallons a day of drinkable water by 2024, Al Tayer said on the sidelines of the World Government Summit in Dubai.

The seventh World Government Summit kicked off in Dubai on Sunday, 10 February with the participation of more than 4,000 people from 140 countries.

The CEO added that DEWA is working on developing a reservoir to hold as much as 6 billion gallons of water reserves, noting that the utility is currently storing up to 700 million gallons.

The investment cost of the solar-powered desalination plant wasn’t revealed.