UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure and Agility Sign MoU to Accelerate Energy Efficiency in Data Centers and District Cooling

Abu Dhabi, UAE — 29 Jan 2026 — The UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure and Agility have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to collaborate on advancing energy efficiency and economic performance across data centers and district cooling operations in the UAE; strengthening the UAE's competitiveness regionally and globally.

The MoU was signed by His Excellency Eng. Sharif Al Olama, Undersecretary for Energy and Petroleum Affairs at the UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, and Tarek Sultan, Chairman of Agility.

As part of the collaboration, Agility will draw on control system technology developed by Phaidra, a global leader in developing AI agents for power optimization. Phaidra's technology is used to manage complex power, cooling, and workload management systems underpinning modern data centers — capabilities that are increasingly critical as AI workloads drive higher density, energy intensity, and performance requirements.

The MoU establishes a framework to conduct a targeted study and anticipates a pilot project to evaluate the deployment of Phaidra's reinforcement learning models within industrial infrastructure. The Phaidra platform has proven to be effective at reducing capital expenditures for cooling, lowering energy consumption by up to 40%, and enhancing the safety, resilience, and reliability of data center infrastructure — areas of heightened importance in high ambient-temperature environments.

The partnership will enable both parties to assess opportunities to scale AI-enabled optimization solutions more broadly, reinforcing the UAE's position as a preferred global destination for AI and digital infrastructure investment, while advancing sustainability and energy-efficiency objectives aligned with the UAE Net Zero 2050 Strategy and the Ministry's Energy Efficiency Strategy.

His Excellency Engineer Sharif Al Olama, Undersecretary for Energy and Petroleum Affairs at the UAE Ministry of Energy and Infrastructure, said: "Enhancing the efficiency of energy-intensive infrastructure, especially data centers and artificial intelligence applications, is a key pillar of the UAE's competitiveness and sustainability agenda. This partnership comes within the framework of adopting practical solutions based on advanced technology, which contribute to reducing energy consumption, enhancing the reliability of the infrastructure, and advancing the country's leadership in developing the new generation of artificial intelligence data centers."

Tarek Sultan, Chairman of Agility, said: "This MoU reflects the importance of effective public-private collaboration as AI reshapes global digital and physical infrastructure. As AI workloads scale, infrastructure efficiency becomes a binding constraint. Applying advanced AI control systems enables complex power and cooling environments to operate as integrated, adaptive systems—materially improving efficiency, resilience, and long-term economics. Phaidra builds intelligent control systems for the world's most complex industrial facilities. This collaboration supports the UAE's ambition to lead in both hard assets and digital infrastructure, and where the two meet."