Designing a 100% Renewable Water Utility: Lessons from NEOM’s Blank Canvas
Executive Exchange — Episode Feature with Gavin van Tonder, Head of Water at NEOM / ENOWA
In this episode of the Exec Exchange, Dr. Piers Clark talks to Gavin van Tonder about a question most utilities are circling and very few are structurally prepared for:
How do you build – or convert – a water utility to run on 100% renewable energy?
Gavin isn’t working at the margins. He’s leading water for NEOM, the planned region in northwest Saudi Arabia being built largely from scratch, and designed from day one around renewables, circularity and environmental protection.
It’s the kind of challenge most utility leaders joke about over coffee – “If only I had a blank sheet of paper…”
Gavin actually got one.
From Meters and Sensors to a Megaproject
Before NEOM, Gavin wasn’t running a utility at all. He was President of Itron Water in Austin, Texas, working on:
- Water and heat meters
- Sensors and leak detection
- Non-revenue water services for hundreds of utilities globally
When NEOM’s then-CEO (ex-Siemens) came looking for someone to design the water strategy in 2018, the brief was very deliberate: don’t hire a traditional utility insider; hire someone who understands technology, data and servicesand can think beyond inherited structures.
Gavin’s first job wasn’t to write a strategy document. It was to build a team.
He’s effectively been playing “fantasy football for the water sector”:
hand-picking around 200 people from utilities, technology providers and other sectors, and dropping them into roles inside NEOM and ENOWA (NEOM’s energy and water company). He even offers a half-serious apology in the episode to anyone listening whose best people he’s poached.
NEOM: Scale, Ambition, and a Hard Constraint
For anyone who’s managed to miss the headlines:
- NEOM is a new region in northwest Saudi Arabia, on the Gulf of Aqaba, bordering Jordan
- The area is roughly the size of Belgium
- It includes multiple developments:
- The Line – the much-discussed linear city
- A mountain resort in the highlands
- Magna, a coastal development along the Aqaba shoreline
- Island developments (Dalla, Shusha)
- Oxagon, an industrial and logistics hub
The long-term plan is to support around 9 million people, with only 5% of the land ever being built on. The rest is to be protected.
For water and energy, there are two non-negotiables baked into the design:
- Sustainability and circular economy principles
- A fully renewable energy system – no fossil baseload quietly smoothing out the rough edges
That last point is where things get interesting for other utilities.
What 100% Renewable Really Means for Water
Most utilities talk about “increasing their share of renewables.” NEOM is planning for a future where renewables are the whole share.
That reality has consequences:
- When there is sun and wind, energy is abundant and relatively cheap.
- When there isn’t, energy is scarce and very expensive.
- There is no gas or coal baseload to quietly fill the gaps. Diesel generators exist only as true backup.
So Gavin’s team had to design a water system that can ride the volatility of renewable generation instead of being broken by it.
Two core moves stand out:
1. Use Water as a Battery
NEOM’s geography helps. The region has mountains up to 2.5 km high running close to the coast.
That opens the door to pumped hydro:
- Pump water uphill when solar and wind are plentiful
- Store it in high-level reservoirs
- Release it later to generate electricity when renewables dip and prices spike
NEOM is planning a 2 GW pumped hydro scheme, turning its topography into long-duration storage that supports both the energy and water systems.
2. Design Around Time-of-Use Energy
If you’re going to live with time-of-use pricing and intermittent supply, you can’t just bolt a few batteries onto a conventional operating model.
Gavin’s team sized and staged infrastructure around a simple question:
“When do we choose to use energy?”
Examples:
- Desalination:
- Large reverse osmosis plants are being sized for future peak populations.
- In the early years, that capacity allows them to run only when renewable energy is available and cheap, shutting down trains when it isn’t.
- Storage:
- A reservoir sized for 500,000 people might initially serve far fewer, providing two weeks of storage rather than five days.
- That excess buffer means pumping can be concentrated into periods of low-cost, abundant renewable energy.
Yes, the capex is bigger up front. But as Gavin points out, because population will grow over decades, you can:
- Overbuild strategically early
- Use that extra capacity to shield yourself from high-tariff periods
- Let demand catch up over time
It’s a long-term play: spend sooner on infrastructure, save for decades on energy.
Beyond Solar Panels: Recovery, Not Just Generation
While the bulk of NEOM’s power will come from solar and wind (currently ~60% solar, ~25% wind, subject to change as assets come online), Gavin’s team is also pushing every reasonable form of energy recovery from water operations.
Key elements:
- Wastewater energy recovery
- Every wastewater treatment plant is designed for zero liquid and zero solid discharge.
- Energy recovery from sludge is mandatory, with storage so that recovered energy can be used when tariffs are high.
- In-pipe and vertical head recovery
- With buildings up to 500 metres high, there is significant opportunity to recover energy as water moves down through the system.
- Gavin is candid that this is more energy recovery than net new generation – you pump it up, you recapture some on the way down – but in a fully renewable system, those percentages matter.
- Wave energy pilots
- Two companies are testing wave-based technologies: one with buoys and fronds, another integrated into marina structures.
- For now, these are small, local contributions, not system-scale solutions.
Some things don’t make sense in NEOM’s context:
- The Red Sea conditions and environmental constraints make floating solar at sea a poor fit.
- There’s no natural surface water for conventional floating solar. That option may eventually sit on pumped hydro reservoirs, but not on lakes or rivers, because there aren’t any.
So What Can Existing Utilities Actually Use from This?
Most utilities don’t have a Belgium-sized greenfield site and a royal decree. They do, however, have some headaches in common.
A few practical takeaways from NEOM’s experience:
- Audit your “battery options”
Don’t just think electrical storage. Where can you use elevated storage, reservoirs, networks and WWTPs to buffer demand and shift load into low-tariff periods? - Treat desal and treatment capacity as flexible, not fixed
If you’re using reverse osmosis or other modular processes, design to ramp and pause with energy availability, not just water demand. - Overbuild selectively where growth is inevitable
In fast-growing regions, it may be rational to oversize storage and treatment early to gain energy flexibility, then let population growth fill the gap. - Design for time-of-use pricing now, even if it’s politically awkward
The economics of renewables are only going one way: variability and time-linked pricing are coming. Planning as if tariffs are flat forever is wishful thinking. - Energy recovery is no longer optional
Biogas from sludge, in-pipe and head-based recovery, and advanced process control should be treated as standard practice, not “innovations”.
A Leadership Note: Don’t Ignore Experience
The episode closes on a very human point.
Gavin’s advice to his younger self – and to younger professionals in the sector – is blunt:
When we’re young, we think we know everything. Don’t discount the experience of people who’ve actually done it.
NEOM is not being built on clever ideas alone. It’s being built on the accumulated experience of around 200 peoplefrom utilities and companies around the world who have seen what works, what fails, and what quietly breaks five years after commissioning.
For any utility leader looking at the coming wave of decarbonisation, electrification and regulation, that’s a useful reminder:
Ambition without experience is a risk. Experience without ambition is a dead end. You need both.
To hear the full discussion with Gavin van Tonder on NEOM, ENOWA and preparing a water utility for a 100% renewable future, listen to this episode of the Exec Exchange.