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Dubai Municipality has set a 27 September deadline for developers to submit expressions of interest (EOIs) for its planned Jebel Ali waste-to-energy (WTE) public-private partnership (PPP), according to a source.

The greenfield facility is planned to treat up to 6,000 tonnes of municipal solid waste a day.

The municipality is seeking international and local developers to develop, finance and operate the facility. It is planning to prequalify developers later this year before issuing a request for proposals (RFP) in the first quarter of next year, a source said.

The Jebel Ali facility is intended to support Dubai’s waste-management strategy and its target of reducing reliance on landfill.

Dubai Municipality is being advised by a team led by Abu Dhabi’s Tribe Infrastructure Group, with UK-headquartered Ashurst and Germany’s Fichtner also involved.

It was confirmed to MEED that the project is separate from the planned second phase of the Warsan WTE facility, for which Dubai Municipality issued a consultancy tender in February.

That facility will be located in Warsan 2, next to the Al-Aweer sewage treatment plant. The expansion is expected to increase waste-conversion capacity at the existing Warsan site with an estimated budget of $500m. The consultancy contract has a duration of six years.

The original Warsan WTE plant, Dubai’s first major WTE public-private partnership (PPP) project, reached full commercial operations in 2024.

Located in the Warsan area, the AED4bn ($1.1bn) facility treats 1.9 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, generating up to 220MW of thermal energy that is fed into the local grid.

In February 2023, state utility Dubai Electricity & Water Authority (Dewa) and Dubai Waste Management Company signed the power-purchase agreement (PPA) for the project.

Dubai Waste Management Company, the special-purpose vehicle implementing the scheme, reached financial close in June 2021 for the project.

The Warsan project was developed under a 35-year PPP concession by a consortium comprising Dubai Holding, Dubai Aluminium, Tech Group and Itochu Corporation. 

The main contractor was a joint venture of Belgium’s Besix Group and Hitachi Zosen Inova of Switzerland.