[2] SWA has a supervisory and strategic role in regulating and overseeing the water sector of Saudi Arabia and is also responsible for developing new policies, strategies, programs, and initiatives, instituting necessary control and requirements for water sector licenses related to developing human capacity, developing technical and engineering standards for the water industry, and ensuring its alignment with the standing Saudi benchmarks for local content and sustainability.

SWCC invested in research and development and collaborated with international partners and academic institutions to improve the efficiency of its desalination processes, as the initial desalination process was energy-intensive and produced a significant amount of brine, a highly concentrated saline solution that had to be disposed of carefully to avoid environmental harm.

[15][16] In 2008, the company started the operation of barges, launching the first floating system for desalinated water production.

[21][22] In 2023, SWCC became the largest producer by transferring operating tasks and specialisations for 139 dam and well plants, achieving a daily freshwater output of 11.5 million cubic meters.

The Saudi Water Authority (SWA) has a production capacity of 7.5 million cubic metres per day.

Later, the company switched to Multi-Effect Distillation (MED) due to the MSF energy-intensiveness and extensive maintenance required as a result of the scaling and corrosion caused by the high salt content of seawater.

MED showed improvement over MSF in terms of energy efficiency but still suffered from scale buildup and corrosion issues.

After that, SWA switched to Reverse Osmosis (RO), which uses a semi-permeable membrane to separate salt and other impurities from seawater.

The local agriculture sector is the country’s highest water consumer, and it contributes to the depletion of fossil aquifers.

The Crown Prince’s Vision 2030 outlined the Kingdom’s aim to increase the role of private operators in the desalination industry.

The Kingdom aims to raise US$200 billion in investment (not including Saudi Aramco’s IPO) through private-public partnerships and privatisation.

It also aims to replace the use of liquid fuel in its plants with alternative low-emission energy sources, which will reduce the company’s emissions by 10.8 million tonnes by 2024.