Emirates Central Cooling Systems Corporation (Empower) used this week’s Arabian Travel Market to quantify its footprint in Dubai’s hospitality sector: by the end of 2025, it was supplying district cooling to roughly one in four of the emirate’s 827 hotel and hotel apartment facilities.
The company’s portfolio covers some of Dubai’s more recognisable addresses, including Burj Al Arab, Atlantis The Royal, Atlantis The Palm, One Za’abeel, Jumeirah Marsa Al Arab and JW Marriott Marquis Dubai, alongside dozens of other properties.
Empower claims district cooling can cut electricity consumption for cooling by up to 50% compared with conventional air conditioning, a meaningful figure for large hotel and resort operations where cooling typically represents a substantial share of energy costs. The company’s network in Dubai now stretches across more than 430 kilometres of transmission and distribution pipeline, supported by 90 plants across the emirate.
CEO Ahmad Bin Shafar said the hospitality sector’s continued expansion would sustain demand for what Empower provides. “The continued growth of the tourism and hospitality sector in the coming years will create significant opportunities for sustainable cooling solutions, particularly as hotel establishments increasingly adopt efficient and flexible technologies that align with the evolving expectations of travelers and the requirements of future cities,” he said.
The backdrop is Dubai’s Urban Master Plan 2040, which targets a 134% increase in land allocated for hotel and tourism activities by that date. Empower is positioning itself as essential infrastructure for that expansion, and the ATM timing was deliberate: the company is clearly pitching to developers and hospitality groups actively planning future projects.
The announcement is a press release, and the framing is promotional. But the underlying data point, that a single utility now serves nearly a quarter of Dubai’s hotel stock through a technology that materially reduces energy use, is a reasonable measure of how embedded district cooling has become in the city’s infrastructure model.
