Samer Abusaa

Saudi Tabreed has distinguished itself in the market as a pioneer in sustainable district cooling systems and focuses on providing the best service to its clients while optimizing energy consumption.

70% of electrical consumption in Saudi Arabia is due to cooling. How is the company positioned to offer an effective and sustainable solution for energy optimization in the Kingdom?

Sustainability is the key word of our activity; we talk about sustainability all the time. Saudi Tabreed is committed to reducing carbon emissions and saving the oil requirements for the country: we are trying to use renewable sources of energy as much as we can. Our major focus is to provide cooling services using technologies that depend on sustainable or renewable sources of energy. Our aim and focus are to reduce cooling requirements by having a centralized cooling system to serve multiple applications. A district cooling system is the production and distribution of chilled water from a central facility to multiple buildings. Along with our sister company, ACWA Power, we recently signed a contract with the Red Sea Project, one of the leading projects related to Vision 2030. The project is the first of its kind on the globe—it is the only project in the world where we are using 100% renewable energy to operate and to start cooling plants operation. It uses solar energy with batteries in order to generate the power supply requirements for our two cooling plants that will serve the whole project. We will need, under normal circumstances, around 35MW from the grid, and now it will entirely come from renewable energy. Another project that we are currently working on and will be completed in the coming months is a business park in Dhahran, and we are using solar on the facade of the building and some area available for us to generate a certain amount of power. This power will be used for the auxiliary operations of the plant. This is what we are focusing on from a sustainability point of view. We are working on the market now with different stakeholders in order to optimize the equipment efficiency, reduce the general power consumption, and promote the cooperation of key players from all over the world to find solutions and alternatives that will contribute to sustainability.

How do you ensure the application of best practices and technology to every single project you carry out?

We have forged partnerships with the key players operating in the sector. We know the major components that we have to use in the plant room, and we know the power consumption of each component. We cultivate a constant dialogue with the key chiller suppliers all over the world in the US, Europe, China, and South Korea. On our side, we are ready to contribute to the development of the projects that suppliers are designing and realizing for us.

How do you work to instill awareness and educate the market about the importance of investing in state-of-the-art technologies and solutions?

We continue to foster a solid government and private sector partnership network and dialogue. In the kingdom, we are actively working to increase awareness of the benefits of district cooling and have witnessed elevated demand for it from major players such as ARAMCO that is actively seeking to minimize the carbon footprints.. We regularly organize face-to-face meetings with stakeholders, we attend exhibitions, and we regularly give detailed presentations where we go through the system and explaining the advantages and benefits. Consultants are the key people advising entities in the government, and we focus on having effective education sessions with the consultants so they can also explain the same to the end users.

How do you ensure the perfect execution of projects and their maintenance in the medium term?

From the beginning, we have created our own arm for the operation and maintenance, owned and run 100% by Saudi Tabreed. This company employs expertise from all over the world to make sure the systems operate according to our requirements.