WAREG is looking for a water and wastewater regulatory policy analyst

WAREG-European Water Regulators is the association of national and regional public authorities that hold monitoring and/or decision-making responsibilities on price-setting, quality standards and customers’ protection in the drinking water and wastewater sector, in Europe.

WAREG is currently looking for a water and wastewater regulatory policy analyst to work for the development of WAREG’s research activities and institutional relations with EU Institutions and with relevant stakeholders, in the drinking water and wastewater sector. The successful candidate will be based in Brussels, with periodical visits to the legal office in Milan. Smart working is allowed. 

Application can be send by e-mails to secretariat@wareg.org before 19 February. For more information, here you can find all the details.

ICRA is looking for a Research Engineer to work in the iWAYS project

ICRA – the Catalan Institute for Water Research – is looking for a passionate research engineer (PhD optional, but not obligatory) to work on the European funded project iWAYS (http://www.iways.eu/).

In iWAYS, ICRA will evaluate membrane distillation and steam condensation at pilot scale to recover heat and water in the steel manufacturing industry. Suitable experience of the candidate may hence include: thermal distillation and steam condensation, membrane technology, pilot-plants design and operation, evaluation and reporting of experimental results.

The person should be flexible to travel to project meetings and to the pilot site in the Basque country. ICRA offers a collaborative environment in a dynamic and well-reputed research centre. The 3-year position is supervised by Wolfgang Gernjak.

Deadline for application: January 24^th, 2021. Apply here.

ZERO BRINE project heads into the final year

The ZERO BRINE project entered its forth and last year thus results are well underway. Coordinated by TU Delft, the project’s goal is to re-designing the value and supply chain of water and minerals: A circular economy approach for the recovery of resources from brine generated by process industries.

By integrating innovative technologies ZERO BRINE aims to recover water and minerals of sufficient purity and quality for good market value. Two of the pilot demonstrations have just concluded: the coal mine pilot in Poland and the silica pilot in Spain.

Water Knowledge Europe 2020 Horizon Europe closes with 17 Working Groups Meetings & the launch of 2 new Groups

The digital Water Knowledge Europe Horizon Europe edition concluded on December 16 offering us great highlights over the last six days. During the event, 17 Working Groups organised their meetings to share with their members latest updates and activities, as well as to discuss new inputs and insights for the development of their white papers.

Two new Working Groups also saw the light: the Water & Health Working Group and the SWANSET (Smart Water Network Sensors and Tools) Working Group. The goal of the Water & Health WG is to make health an important element in EU water related policies and boost the R&I methodology, while the SWANSET WG aspires to identify future trends in the sector contributing to enhance water services and solve water-related global challenges according to Water Europe (WE) Vision.

The newly launched Working Groups introduced its members to their mission and goals and demonstrated their main action points, stimulating interesting discussions with their members. More information on our Working Groups meetings will follow up soon. 

Water Knowledge Europe 2020 Horizon EU has concluded

It’s less than a week since we concluded the 2nd edition of Water Knowledge Europe 2020 dedicated to Horizon Europe and we are now excited to share with you all the post-event materials & key highlights of the event. Over 6 days, we had online with us more than 200 attendees for:

♦ The introduction to the Horizon Europe water-related Clusters and destinations for 2021-2022
♦ 53 B2B meetings
♦ 2nd edition of the Water Projects Europe event
♦ 17 Working Groups sessions
♦ 3 Vision Leadership Team Workshops

A big thank you, once again, to all our Water Europe ambassadors and participants for their meaningful contributions! Download all the materials and explore the highlights here.

Join the 2nd RIMA Open Call Launched this week

RIMA (Robotics for Inspection and Maintenance) is a 4-year project aiming to tackle this gap by establishing a network of 13 Digital Innovation Hubs (DIH) and industry associations to support the uptake of robotics – and help small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) to develop novel solutions for different industry sectors.

The basic instrument of RIMA to financially support the development and deployment of robotics I&M applications will provide one type of eligible action: Robotics Innovation Experiments (RIEs).

Robotics Innovation Experiments (RIE) consist of developing, testing and validating the technical and economic viability of a robotic-based representative model or prototype system to be applied in ‘Target Use Domain’ operational environment. Beneficiaries to progress from TRL5 or TRL6 to TRL7.

– Publication Date: 15th of December 2020, 00:00 (CET)
– Deadline: 17th of March 2021, 16:00 (CET)
– Expected duration of participation: RIE – up to14 months
– Maximum amount of financial support for each third party: RIE €150,000

For more information, please click here.

EU Commission welcomes political agreement on Horizon Europe

The Commission welcomes the political agreement between the European Parliament and the Council on Horizon Europe, the largest transnational programme ever supporting research and innovation.

The new EU research and innovation programme will have a budget of around €95.5 billion for 2021-2027 (current prices). This includes €5.4 billion (current prices) from NextGenerationEU to boost our recovery and make the EU more resilient for the future, as well as an additional reinforcement of €4.5 billion (current prices).

This represents a 30% increase vis-à-vis the current research and innovation programme, Horizon 2020 (comparing Horizon Europe against Horizon 2020 for EU27, in constant prices) and makes it the most ambitious research and innovation programme in the world.

For more information, please contact Andrea Rubini.

Water Europe is participating in AquaSPICE project

Water Europe is thrilled to announce its new collaboration with the new AquaSPICE project. AquaSPICE is a 42-month project, funded by the European Commission under the H2020 programme, focused on advancing sustainability of process industries through digital and circular water use innovations. The European countries where these AquaSPICE’s innovations will be tested are Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia and Romania, and Turkey. 

On December 12th, the RWTH Aachen University team hosted a successful kick-off meeting for AquaSPICE, gathering all the partners and fostering interactions within two days.

The project is coordinated by RWTH Aachen University and brings on board a dynamic & large consortium of 29 partners. To know more about the project visit the official website.

Tomas Michel, President’s Editorial

Dear Water Europe Family! 

The Water Europe Board met this month for the first time since the General Meeting in June 2020. We are getting as much used to, and efficient with, these digital meetings, as the desire to be able to be together soon grows!

On this occasion, the Board reflected on the strategy and priorities for the next year and elected a Water Europe Executive Committee (WE ExCom), in its new form and composition. This new WE ExCom consists of the Water Europe President, the Executive Director and five Vice-Presidents who are in charge of different portfolios according to the main priorities of Water Europe. The ExCom is a new WE governance tool and is to become an important and central driver to ensure we are getting the job done. 

 Re-elected WE president by the Board for another (and last) two-year term, it will be a pleasure and privilege to work closely with this new ExCom, and specially with Hans Goossens, new Vice-president elect of Water Europe. A full article on the new ExCom is featured below in the newsletter.

This month, Water Europe launched its new position paper on the revision of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD) “For a Green, Circular & Smart Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive”. In this paper, Water Europe welcomes the conclusion of the European Commission to update the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD) in line with the Green Deal and the digitalization of Europe. Water Europe makes available a list of recommendations that hopefully will pave the way and contribute to achieving a Water-Smart Society.

 Next important event coming up is the 2^nd edition of our Water Knowledge Europe. The agenda of this digital event has taken now full shape. This main WE collaboration event will focus on the new Horizon Europe 2021 program. As we are already getting used to, this highly valued event nobody doing Water related research in Europe should miss, will again host interesting speakers from the European Commission who will share their insights on the Horizon Europe water-related Clusters and destinations.

In this edition, we will also host the second workshop of the Water Projects Europe new event series under the title ‘Digital Water for a “Europe fit for the digital age”. The workshop will revolve around the Digital Water challenges and perspectives towards a green and digital transition, featuring speakers from selected projects and organizations who will offer tangible examples on how R&I contributes to building a resilient, green and digital Europe.

Everything we do at Water Europe, would be meaningless if there wasn´t a gateway and clear projection towards the future. We might lead now, but we will need the input and decided action of new generations of water enthusiast who will soon follow up, and shape in praxis, many of the models and ideas now proposed. It is thus a pleasure to feature and interview with Hasmik Barseghyan, President of the European Youth Parliament for Water who talks about the highlights of her presidency and her plans for the next months.

 Stay healthy, stay safe.

 Tomás Michel

Hasmik Barseghyan, President of the European Youth Parliament for Water talks to us about the highlights of her presidency & her future plans

What were your personal drivers that led you to the position of the President of the European Youth Parliament for Water? What do you want to accomplish?

Thank you for this opportunity to reflect and sum-up with you! One year ago, my personal driver was to invest my energy to consolidate the skills and talents of future water leaders, raise each other, cooperate and make a positive change! Those young people will become decision-makers in 10-15 years. We need to make sure that they are well prepared to face more tough challenges, with hard and soft skills, with strong networks and most importantly standing on values and principles! At EYPW, with the support of the International Secretariat for Water – Solidarity Water Europe, we aim to strengthen the position of young people as full-fledged actors in the water sector, from water management to governance. 

We have noticed many water youth initiatives over the last years. Why is it important to get the youth involved and engaged in all the aspects of the water sector?

We are living in unprecedented times of global challenges (climate change, pandemic, migration, etc), where collective efforts generate the most of value. Water is a vector of cooperation and a means of development. We can better recover and build better resilience to climate, health and economic challenges if we put water and multilateralism in the center. Specialized youth are able to strongly contribute to knowledge generation, as well as to social engagement, being the bridge between the university-industry-government-public-environment. Through investing more in youth education in water and cross-disciplinary studies, we will generate more knowledge and achieve the goal of active citizenship and collective action.

Formal and obligatory involvement of specialized youth to local and regional transboundary water councils and projects is very important in terms of using youth potential as flexible, creative and out-of-box thinkers as well as to make synergies through intergenerational dialogue. In this way, young people will take the responsibility for decisions, ownership of solutions and will contribute to their best implementation. 

How do you manage to address youth needs in water and make the youth’s voice stronger?

Young people’s needs in the water sector and in general are very diverse and grow dynamically. Every leader has its own perception and perspective. When you are committed to your driving principles and goals, you will find the way, you find the people! My recipe is simple: your voice will be heard and considered if your content creates added value! For that, we need to constantly learn, openly share with peers, have courage to speak up and be perseverant on our objectives!

EYPW is raising youth voice on several platforms, from Water Europe to EU Water Alliance, as well as at UN WWQA, at UNESCO, at Amsterdam International Water Week, to mention a few. 

What are you currently working on?

Currently we are working with our active international youth on water-peace-security topic, to find ways of youth participation in the implementation of tools in the EU and in the larger Europe. Our youth are mobilized in the preparation works for the 9th edition of the WWForum. Hopefully, we will be able to finally activate the EYPW youth projects that our delegates have initiated during the last session. EYPW is closely working with Water Europe Human Capital working group on the sustainable human capital agenda for the water sector. With the EU Water Alliance, EYPW is actively participating in the dialogue with EU Commissioners. A lot of activities are yet to come!