Nakheel cannot continue to subsidise chiller charges for property owners due to rising power costs, the company’s Chairman has said in exclusive comments to Emirates 24|7.

“Nakheel has been subsidising chiller charges for owners for long. We can, to a maximum, keep our profits at bare minimum but we can’t continue to subsidise the charges,” Ali Rashid Lootah told this website.

“Electricity charges have gone up, which are reflected in higher chiller charges,” he said, adding that Nakheel’s charges “are in line with other district cooling companies in Dubai for similar-sized properties.”

His comments came after Jumeirah Islands villa owners and residents opposed an increase in chiller charges. The company recently informed owners in the upscale villa community that it will be charging chiller at Dh1.40 per tonne of refrigeration an hour, instead of Dh0.563 per tonne it levied in 2011. It has, however, waived off the capacity charge of Dh1,250 per month.

Mohammed Khalifa bin Hammad, Senior Director, Real Estate Regulatory Agency (Rera) had earlier stated that the utility and chiller charges were behind an increase in service charges across Dubai.

Anne, a reader, commented: “District cooling plants became popular and acceptable because they go by logical principle of economies of scale for air-conditioning. It is so amazing to see that district cooling is prohibitively more expensive than conventional split cooling. All are paying price for services providers’ greed and inefficiencies and to start with engineering design miscalculations.”