ISIDORA CIRIC (ABU DHABI)

The UAE is leading the region, and much of the world, when it comes to adopting autonomous operations in the energy sector, with new data showing that 58% of its energy organisations are targeting full autonomy within five years - more than any other country in the Middle East.

The Autonomous Maturity report, released by Schneider Electric at ADIPEC 2025, also revealed that nearly 80% of industry leaders in the region have reached advanced stages of operational readiness. Among them, the majority of UAE respondents already operate at Level 4 - the second-highest level of autonomy - where systems can make independent decisions in specific scenarios, with minimal human input.

“It’s not very surprising that the UAE came out on top,” Devan Pillay, Schneider Electric’s Global President of Heavy Industries, told Aletihad on the sidelines of ADIPEC 2025.

While cost efficiency was the top global driver for autonomy adoption, Pillay attributed the UAE’s lead to “a combination of a few things”, starting with the country’s deliberate national agenda and innovation-conducive policy frameworks.

“The most important factor is the leadership’s ambition and determination. They’re very intentional about positioning the UAE as this hub for innovation in general, but more specifically around autonomous operation,” he said.

Another important enabler of autonomy is the state of the infrastructure itself, Pillay added, pointing out that the UAE’s energy facilities have kept pace with global advances in digitalisation, making them suitable environments for higher levels of automation.

“When you’ve got policy, a fully digitalised infrastructure, and the backing of your government, the business leaders’ confidence improves - and I wish this was the case in many economies around the world.”

From Pilot Projects to Exportable Models

Pillay described the UAE as an industrially mature economy that is now turning its longstanding operational strength into a platform for intelligent, data-led growth, adding that Schneider’s collaboration with ADNOC Refining offers a great example of that transition.

The two innovators are currently piloting a system designed to address one of the most persistent risks in traditional automation - the tendency of operators to repeatedly override faults, a behaviour that can, over time, shorten the lifespan of critical plant infrastructure.

“The machine gives you a signal to say you’ve got an issue and there’s a fault, and the operator has the possibility of cancelling that fault. What this system does - it actually gives the operator a perspective of what are the long-term ramifications of continuing to cancel the fault,” he explained.

By alerting teams to the risks of repeat overrides, such as transformer overheating that could result in costly outages, the system also gradually begins to learn from those interactions. This, Pillay added, introduces a new layer of operational awareness and represents a stepping stone towards higher levels of autonomy.

“I believe this is getting the plant to at least a level where it starts to have a lot more self-diagnostics and is able to build models around self-healing as well,” he said, adding that over time, these systems become more capable of preventing failures altogether.

“With autonomous deployments, we’re already seeing a reduction in maintenance costs that can reach 60% in some cases.”

Beyond these trials, the UAE is witnessing a much wider expansion of AI-driven autonomy across its entire energy value chain.

Earlier this week, ADNOC, Masdar, Microsoft, and XRG announced a new strategic agreement to develop and deploy AI agents across ADNOC’s operations. Masdar’s AI-driven systems in Masdar City, meanwhile, have achieved a 38% reduction in energy consumption, offering a local model for grid resilience and autonomous urban energy systems.

Pillay believes that these advances in autonomous operations and digital systems are turning the country’s domestic efficiency gains into an exportable form of industrial capability.

“Now UAE will be able to take UAE to other parts of the world. And like they used to export oil and gas in the past, now they’re going to export this kind of capability, which they are certainly leading the race towards.”