POWERED BY FANARQatar Cool has been part of Qatar’s district cooling sector for over 20 years, serving districts including West Bay and The Pearl. As the company joins the QSTP × TotalEnergies WaterTech Accelerator as a piloting partner, its Acting CEO Eng. Nahar Al-Mutawa sat down to discuss the water challenges at the heart of the business and what meaningful innovation in this space would actually look like. His starting point is a principle he applies consistently: “If we stop at one level, we won’t be efficient anymore. We must continually improve.”
The Gap That Made the Moment
“Water scarcity and efficient water management are at the core of everything we do at Qatar Cool,” says Al-Mutawah. “Qatar is a naturally water-stressed country and requires special attention to preserve it.”
District cooling systems operate using two distinct water loops. The first is an open loop, where water is used in cooling towers and partially lost through evaporation to generate cooling. The second is a closed loop, where chilled water is circulated through a network of pipes to buildings.
The initial focus was on the open loop. In 2012, the relevant government authority mandated the replacement of potable water with treated sewage effluent (TSE) in cooling tower operations. Qatar Cool implemented this transition in phases over several years. “We approached this very carefully and strategically,” Al-Mutawah notes, “ensuring that the transition did not impact asset integrity or operational reliability.”
“TSE cannot be used in the closed loop due to its chemical composition, which could damage the pipe network and critical equipment,” he explains. “As a result, we still rely on potable water in this part of the system, and that remains a key gap in the closed loop system. This is where the opportunity lies,” he adds. “We need innovative solutions that allow us to further reduce potable water usage.”
The evaporation cycle is where a large quantity of water loss occurs. Between 70 and 90 percent of the water used in that process is lost to the atmosphere. “We approached some of the universities: can that quantum be captured and reutilized? Can you imagine how much saving can be?” Al-Mutawa says.
What Success Actually Looks Like
When it comes to what a productive accelerator journey would look like, Al-Mutawa is straightforward. He is not looking for studies or white papers. He wants something that can be tested and measured and put into practice. “Many of the studies now come on paper, but with no genuine measurement that reflects the success,” he says. “What we are looking for is to have something on the ground in order to do the real evaluation for the ideas.”
Qatar Cool’s own approach to adopting new technology reflects this. The company introduced condition monitoring by starting with a single asset in one plant, evaluated the results, then scaled across all its facilities. It is now moving toward AI-driven analysis of data coming from its systems. “We use the data coming from the system in order to be analyzed through artificial intelligence and come up with a new result,” Al-Mutawa explains.
A Strategy Built on Pillars
Qatar Cool’s involvement in the WaterTech Accelerator connects to the company’s wider sustainability strategy, in which water efficiency is one of the central pillars. Al-Mutawa describes water efficiency as something the company deals with carefully. District cooling, he notes, already contributes to sustainability by significantly reducing electricity consumption for cooling and thereby cutting CO2 emissions.
“Every year, we are amazed with the level of CO2 reduction,” he says.
The Challenges Nobody Talks About Enough
When asked about the most pressing challenges in delivering cooling in Qatar’s climate, Al-Mutawa points to customer behavior as a key one. When district cooling was first introduced in West Bay, many building owners compared their costs against conventional cooling and resisted the shift. Over time, as the financial benefits became visible, attitudes changed.
But familiarity brought a new problem. Some customers with access to an efficient system do not use it efficiently. “They are part of the stakeholders,” Al-Mutawa says, adding that behavioral innovations targeting customer stakeholders to reduce their consumption would be a great transformative asset. Qatar Cool has responded with educational campaigns and materials on its website to help customers understand how to operate within the system, however further advances are needed.
He also raises gray water generated from towers as an area worth exploring. “Unfortunately, this is an opportunity that has gone down the drain. It’s not explored significantly,” he says.
The Technical Frontier
On technical advances for reducing water consumption, Al-Mutawa points again to the evaporative loss from cooling towers as the most significant opportunity. He wants to go beyond that single problem, however, and open the floor to broader thinking. “I don’t limit the ideas to the problems that we face,” he says. “We want to give an opportunity for institutions to come up with their ideas in case they have any experience externally or internally that can be shared.”
A Call for Practical Innovation
Al-Mutawa’s message to startups is direct. “We are operators, so we know many things,” he says, “The startup has that room where you can come and say: I believe we can solve your problem through this.” Qatar, he adds, is an environment that genuinely supports new ideas. “Anything adding value for our country, we are willing to accept and open the door.” His closing advice is simple: “Don’t stop at one angle as impossible. Don’t take beliefs as given. Challenge the beliefs, because you will find definitely opportunities.”
The application window for the QSTP × TotalEnergies WaterTech Accelerator is closing in just a few days. Apply now here: https://qstp.qa/programs/watertech/
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