HE the Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani attended yesterday the opening session of the Electrical Power and Water Desalination in Arab World Conference.


^{HE the Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada addressing the
opening session of the conference yesterday.}


The two-day event is taking place in St Regis Hotel, Doha.  
Addressing the opening ceremony, HE the Minister of Energy and Industry Dr Mohamed bin Saleh al-Sada said Qatar believes in human capital as the focus of development, and called for joint Arab effort in this regard.  
Discussing the importance of investing in electricity infrastructure to boost development, Minister al-Sada noted that Qatar is set to invest in improving its smart electricity grid in order to absorb energy from several clean sources. Furthermore, the Minister said, the country under the leadership of HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani has achieved 100% access to electricity.  
The Minister said that Qatar relies on natural gas as its only source of electricity. It is currently considered the cleanest source of energy, Minister al-Sada noted and added that the coming years will see Qatar rely on renewable energy, particularly solar.  
The Minister said that Qatar was also focused on rationalising the use of electricity. In 2015, the individual rationalisation of electricity was an average of 14% and that of water was 17%. This resulted in saving QR825mn on electricity and QR522mn on water. This also decreased the carbon footprint by 3.5mn tonnes.  
On the challenge of providing water, the Minister noted that the Middle East is one of the driest regions in the world were the availability of water on average is 1,200 cubic metres per person. This is much below the global average of 7,000 cubic metres. This represents a big challenge, the Minister added, as the averages worldwide are set to halve by 2050.
Meanwhile, the President of Qatar General Electricity & Water Corporation (Kahramaa) Engineer Essa bin Hilal al-Kuwari, who is also Chairman of Arab Union of Electricity, called on the participants of the conference  to come up with effective and enforceable recommendations to ensure achievement of water security and electricity to the countries of the Arab region.  
Speaking at the opening session of the conference, al-Kuwari urged attendees to complete the electrical networks between Arab region’s countries, both internally and externally, to rationalise water usage and reduce wastage of its use (in agriculture, industry, domestic) and to raise efficiency of water use in agriculture and review government subsidies for electricity and water prices.  
He called on participants to work to complete the establishment of regulatory frameworks for integration of energy and water policies to achieve the required sustainability, and encourage scientific research in the areas of energy and water to cover all aspects such as production and consumption, and to increase renewable and new energies in power generation, in particular solar and wind energy.
Engineer al-Kuwari stressed that in spite of abundance of water in the world, it is not available for human use in quantity or quality at a suitable time or desired place, saying that 97.5% of all water on earth is salty and that only 2.5% is fresh. Only 1% of the fresh water on earth is directly accessible to human uses via surface water or wells and the remainder is in the form of ice or in very deep wells.
Al-Kuwari explained that the geographical distribution of sources of renewable water in the world exacerbated the problem of water shortage in the Arab region, which is suffering from a scarcity of water resources as a result of climatic and natural conditions, including the scarcity of rain and lack of river water.
He said that the demand of the Arab countries for water is estimated at about 261tn cubic metres with a gap of 42tn cubic metres that will rise up to 319tn cubic metres between 2020-2030 with a gap of 119tn cubic metres and then the demand will rise to 393tn cubic metres in 2040-2050 with a gap of 194tn cubic metres.
Al-Kuwari added that the desalination in the Arab region is one of the traditional solutions to reduce the gap between supply and demand, particularly in the Gulf states, which are suffering from a great shortage of water resources, as most of the GCC countries produce 57% of the worldwide desalination production.