Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering, 2018, 7, 1-26 http://www.scirp.org/journal/cweee ISSN Online: 2168-1570 ISSN Print: 2168-1562 DOI: 10.4236/cweee.2018.71001 Nov. 27, 2017 1 Computational Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering Assessment of the Water-Energy Nexus in the Municipal Water Sector in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia Homoud Al-Mutrafi 1 , Waleed Al-Zubari 2 , Alaa El-Sadek 2 , Ibrahim Abdel Gelil 2 1 Research and Development Center, Saudi Aramco, Dhahran, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2 College of Postgraduate Studies, Arabian Gulf University, Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain Abstract When it comes to water and energy, it is hard to obtain one without the other. Water is required to produce energy and energy is necessary in water produc- tion and management. As demands for water are escalating due to rapid pop- ulation growth and urbanization, understanding and quantification of the in- terdependency between water and energy, along with analyzing nexus interac- tions, trade-offs and risks are a pre-requisite for effective and integrated plan- ning and management of these two key sectors. This paper performs an as- sessment of the water-energy nexus in the municipal sector of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia, where the electric energy footprint in the water val- ue chain (groundwater, desalination and wastewater treatment) and the water footprint in electric energy generation (thermal power plants) are quantified using data for the year 2013. The results confirmed the high and strong de- pendency on energy for the municipal water cycle in the Eastern Province and revealed that energy generation dependency on freshwater resources is also major and evident, especially at farther distances from the coastal areas. Thermal desalination is by far the most energy intensive stage among the en- tire Eastern Province water cycle. In 2013, it was estimated 13% of the Eastern Province energy generation capacity goes for desalination, that’s a 5% of the Kingdom capacity. Substantial energy input for desalination in the Eastern Province is attributed to the production and conveyance of water to the Capi- tal Riyadh (48.9 kWh/m 3 and 4.2 kWh/m 3 respectively). As for groundwater pumping, it was estimated that 206.2 GWH was used for pumping 268 MCM in 2013 (0.764 kWh/m 3 ). Energy requirement for primary, secondary and ter- tiary wastewater treatment was found to be the least (2 - 108 GWH) and was equivalent to an average of 0.4 kWh/m 3 . The water footprint in electricity generation was estimated to be about 739,308 m 3 in 2013 (0.125 m 3 /kWh), a How to cite this paper: Al-Mutrafi, H., Al-Zubari, W., El-Sadek, A. and Gelil, I.A. (2018) Assessment of the Water-Energy Nexus in the Municipal Water Sector in Eastern Province, Saudi Arabia. Computa- tional Water, Energy, and Environmental Engineering, 7, 1-26. https://doi.org/10.4236/cweee.2018.71001 Received: October 16, 2017 Accepted: November 24, 2017 Published: November 27, 2017 Copyright © 2018 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access