Middle East Business
Dubai's solar park is now built to exceed 8,000 megawatts by 2030, against an original 5,000
By Staff Writer | 20 August 2026
The emirate's electricity and water authority has restated the capacity it expects from the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, and set out the environmental assessment and monitoring work that runs through planning, design, construction and operation of its projects.
Dubai Electricity and Water Authority published a statement on 19 August putting the current capacity of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park at 3,860 megawatts, and saying the park is expected to exceed 8,000 megawatts by 2030. The original target for that date was 5,000 megawatts. The authority projects that the expansion will take clean energy to 36 per cent of Dubai's mix, against an original goal of 25 per cent.
The park is developed under the independent power producer model, in which a project company builds and operates each phase and sells the output to the utility under a long term power purchase agreement.
In doing so, we adhere to the highest standards of efficiency, reliability and sustainability.
Saeed Mohammed Al Tayer, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Dubai Electricity and Water Authority
The other asset in the statement
The Hatta pumped storage hydroelectric plant is described as the first pumped storage hydroelectric project in the Gulf Cooperation Council, with a production capacity of 250 megawatts, a storage capacity of 1,500 megawatt hours and a design life of up to 80 years.
An 80 year design life is a long way outside the period any construction contract or professional indemnity policy will reach, which puts the weight on the operation and maintenance arrangements and on the record of what was built rather than on the remedies in the building contract.
What the environmental work means for a bidder
The authority says environmental impact assessments are used to identify potential effects, support regulatory compliance and carry sustainability requirements from the outset, with the findings written into environmental management plans. Monitoring programmes then assess air, water and soil quality and noise levels through the works so that corrective action can be taken.
That sequence is worth reading closely by anyone pricing this work. Where assessment findings are written into a management plan and the plan is then made a contract document, the obligations in it are contractual obligations, not aspirations, and the monitoring results become the evidence of whether they were met. Three practical consequences follow.
The first is that a limit on dust, noise or discharge recorded in a management plan is a specification. Exceeding it is a breach, and the monitoring record will show when and for how long. The second is that corrective action costs money and takes time, and a contract that requires it without saying who pays for it or whether it grants an extension leaves that argument to be had later. The third is that the reporting, inspection, audit and performance indicator system the authority describes generates a documentary trail that will be available to both parties in any later dispute. That cuts both ways, and it is generally the party with the better contemporaneous record that benefits.
The authority also sets out waste and resource obligations built on circular economy principles, focused on cutting waste generation and on reuse, recycling and material recovery. Where those appear as targets rather than as methods, the burden of showing how they will be met usually falls on the contractor's own proposals, which is where a bid can be won or a liability created.
The published community figures
Outside the projects themselves, the authority reports planting 14,650 mangrove trees at Jebel Ali Marine Sanctuary between 2023 and 2026, of which 700 were planted in 2026 by 254 volunteers contributing 508 volunteer hours. Beach clean ups over the same period removed 3,546 kilograms of waste, largely plastic, with 2,154 volunteers taking part.