TAQA: The Company That Owns Abu Dhabi’s Grid

Ask what Abu Dhabi National Energy Company does and most people will say oil and gas. The name points
that way, the history supports it, and almost every summary written about the company leads with it.

In 2025, oil and gas produced 7.7% of its revenue. Transmitting and distributing
power and water produced 66%.

TAQA is, in the plainest terms, the company that owns Abu Dhabi’s grid. Here is what
its own audited accounts say — including five things almost every published description of it gets
wrong.

Correction one: TRANSCO, ADDC and AADC no longer exist

Every explainer still uses those names. They were retired on 1 January 2025.

From TAQA’s own FY2025 accounts: the group rebranded its wholly owned operating subsidiaries so that
Abu Dhabi Transmission and Despatch Company (TransCo) became TAQA Transmission,
Sustainable Water Solutions Holding became TAQA Water Solutions, and Abu Dhabi
Distribution Company (ADDC) and Al Ain Distribution Company (AADC) were “brought under a single new
brand, TAQA Distribution.”

Note what happened in that last one: two separate distribution companies, one for Abu Dhabi and one for
Al Ain, were merged under a single brand. TAQA Transmission’s own site dates the group identity
announcement to September 2024 and confirms that “effective January 2025, TRANSCO became TAQA
Transmission.”

Correction two: ADQ does not own 98.6% of TAQA

That figure is quoted constantly. It was true immediately after the July 2020 transaction, it is not
true now, and ADQ never held it directly in any case.

The ownership chain, from Note 1 of the FY2025 accounts:

So there is an ADPC layer that most descriptions skip entirely, and the free float exists because ADQ
sold down roughly 8.6% to create one. TAQA is a listed public joint stock company that is 90%
government-controlled through that chain — which is not the same thing as “state-owned”, and worth
phrasing precisely. Our profile of
ADQ under the L’IMAD
reorganisation covers the layer above, and our guide to
investing on ADX covers
the exchange the shares trade on.

Correction three: TAQA does not own EWEC

Emirates Water and Electricity Company appears in TAQA’s accounts only as a related-party
counterparty. EWEC’s own site is unambiguous: it is “the sole procurer of water and power within the
Emirate of Abu Dhabi and beyond”, it “is part of ADQ”, and it was formed in November 2018, succeeding the
Abu Dhabi Water and Electricity Company.

TAQA and EWEC are sister companies under ADQ, transacting at arm’s length. TAQA’s
generation subsidiaries sell to EWEC under long-term power and water purchase agreements; EWEC pays
capacity payments; TAQA charges EWEC transmission use-of-system and connection charges; and TAQA buys
from EWEC at the bulk supply tariff.

The FY2025 related-party figures show the scale of that relationship — AED 7,949 million of revenue
from electricity and water and AED 1,063 million of use-of-system and connection charges on one side,
against AED 22,449 million of bulk supply tariff purchases on the other.

Correction four: Masdar is a joint venture, not a subsidiary

Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company — Masdar — sits in TAQA’s books at 43.0%, unchanged
from 2024, and is equity-accounted rather than consolidated. TAQA also has AED 9,824 million of loans and
advances outstanding to it. Our profile of
Masdar’s global
clean-power business covers that company in its own right.

Correction five: there is no longer a “T&D segment”

During 2025, following a change in internal reporting, transmission and distribution — previously one
reportable segment — were split into two, with 2024 comparatives restated. There are now five reportable
segments: power and water generation; power and water transmission; power and water distribution; oil and
gas; and water solutions. Any analysis citing a combined T&D segment figure is working from a
superseded structure.

What the numbers actually show

That revenue split is the single most useful fact about the company. The regulated networks business is
two-thirds of the top line. The oil and gas operations that give TAQA its reputation are less than a
tenth.

It is also the more predictable business. Distribution revenue is capped by a Maximum Allowed Revenue
formula set in the licence issued by the Abu Dhabi Department of Energy under a Regulatory Control
Framework — TAQA paid AED 121 million in licence fees to the Department in 2025. Regulated returns are
lower than commodity upside in a good year, and vastly steadier across a cycle.

On dividends, TAQA paid an interim AED 0.023 per share for the first nine months of 2025, and on
11 February 2026 the Board proposed a final and variable dividend totalling AED 2,474 million — AED 0.015
final plus AED 0.007 variable per share — subject to approval at the March 2026 General Assembly.

How it got here

TAQA was established on 21 June 2005 by Emiri Decree number 16 of 2005 as a public joint stock company,
listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange.

The regulatory scaffolding around it is older. Law No. 2 of 1998 allowed privatisation and unbundled
the Water and Electricity Department into ADWEA and a Regulatory and Supervision Bureau. Law No. 11 of
2018 established the Abu Dhabi Department of Energy as sector regulator. ADPower was established in 2019.

The decisive moment came in July 2020, when TAQA completed a transaction with ADPower under which
ADPower’s transmission and distribution assets were transferred to TAQA — creating, in TAQA
Transmission’s own words, “one of the largest utility companies in the region”. That is the deal that
turned an oil and gas company into a grid operator. TAQA Transmission today describes itself as “the
largest transmission asset owner in the UAE” and dates its own journey to 1998.

Beyond Abu Dhabi

Internationally TAQA holds 91% of Jorf Lasfar Energy Company 5&6 in Morocco, 90% of Takoradi
International Company, exposure to Uzbekistan through Talimarjan at 40%, and 49% of TA’ZIZ Utilities
Holding. In April 2025 it acquired Transmission Investment Holding Limited, a UK utility investment
platform, outright. It added Saudi joint ventures during 2025, sold its 50% stake in the Lakefield wind
farm in the United States on 1 July 2025, and completed the disposal of TAQA Neyveli Power Company.

Domestically it wholly owns TAQA Transmission, TAQA Distribution and Abu Dhabi Sustainable Water
Solutions Company, while its generation interests are mostly held at 60% across a long list of
independent power projects. The group is chaired by H.E. Mohamed Hassan Alsuwaidi, with Khalifa Sultan
Al Suwaidi as vice chairman, and is audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers under the Abu Dhabi Accountability
Authority framework.

One boundary worth drawing

TAQA owns Abu Dhabi’s transmission and distribution networks — not the UAE’s. Dubai
has DEWA, Sharjah has SEWA, and the Northern Emirates are served separately. The federation’s grid is not
one company’s asset, and describing TAQA as running “the UAE grid” overstates a real position that is
already large enough.

Readers following the emirate’s industrial and infrastructure base may also want our profiles of
AD Ports Group and our
report on Abu
Dhabi’s green sukuk.

Primary sources: TAQA’s
audited
consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2025 — the source of every figure,
ownership percentage and segment above;
TAQA
Transmission on the rebrand, the regulatory history and the 2020 ADPower transaction; and
EWEC on its own role and
ownership. This article is general information, not investment advice.