The Energy Industries Council (EIC) said on 1 October that 136 energy projects under development in the United Arab Emirates carry estimated total capital expenditure of US$210 billion. The figures came from EICDataStream, the council’s project-tracking database, and were presented at EIC Connect UAE 2026 in Abu Dhabi on 22 September. The total is not a sum of approved or spent public investment. It is the estimated capital expenditure associated with projects that EIC is tracking in development. The release did not publish project-by-project costs, funding sources or contractual commitments for the entire portfolio.

Oil and gas make up the largest portion of the estimated spending mix reported by EIC. Upstream developments represent almost 40% of estimated CAPEX, downstream 16%, and midstream just under 12%. The release separately says renewables account for 11% of projects under development, hydrogen 9%, transmission and distribution 8%, and conventional power generation 7%; carbon capture and energy storage each account for 4%. The release does not define the denominator for this second set in the same way as the CAPEX breakdown. Project shares should therefore not be treated as shares of investment value, and the two sets of percentages should not be added together as if they formed one distribution.

Capacity figures describe planned developments as well. EICDataStream tracks 17,980 megawatts of renewable capacity across 14 UAE projects expected to come online by 2030. It lists another 12,947 megawatts of conventional generation capacity across nine projects. These are not measurements of electricity currently generated by operating plants. They are capacity figures associated with projects in the tracked pipeline. EIC’s release explicitly says that not all projects have reached final investment decision, so the capacities should not be read as a confirmed construction schedule or a guaranteed generation forecast.

Regional investment-decision figures underline the gap between a pipeline and projects proceeding to execution. Across the Gulf Cooperation Council, EIC says 28 of 99 renewable projects under development have reached final investment decision. The corresponding counts are two of 39 hydrogen projects and two of 18 carbon-capture projects. EIC’s table shows no such decision yet for the clean-fuels, new nuclear, offshore-wind, or advanced and small modular reactor projects it tracks. These are GCC-wide progression figures, not UAE-only counts.

The conference release also linked the pipeline to infrastructure beyond power generation. EIC reported that two material-recovery facilities under development in Abu Dhabi and Al Ain would have combined sorting capacity of 800,000 tonnes a year. The planned Al Bihouth waste-to-energy facility is expected to process up to 900,000 tonnes of non-recyclable waste annually and generate enough electricity for about 52,000 homes. Those are stated design or expected figures, not operating results. Kent representatives also said a hyperscale data centre can draw more than 100 megawatts and that a one-gigawatt campus could represent approximately US$10 billion of infrastructure investment. EIC did not present that estimate as an independent cost assessment.

EIC describes EICDataStream as a database that tracks energy projects from early development through construction and commissioning and is updated daily by analysts. The published UAE summary, however, does not provide a project-level list, CAPEX ranges, a detailed methodology beyond the presentation date, or probabilities that individual projects will proceed. The US$210 billion figure is best understood as the estimated size of the portfolio EIC tracks, not as committed investment or near-term spending. The next useful indicators are which projects reach final investment decision, secure financing and contracts, and enter service on their stated timelines.