JRC 2023 Report on Drought in Europe

The Joint Research Centre from the European Commission published the Drought in Europe March 2023 to discuss the consequences of an exceptionally dry and warm winter in 2022, a historically low snow water equivalent in the Alps and it forecasts a season that can be critical for water resources in Europe.

According the report, due to an exceptionally dry and warm winter, soil moisture and river flow are already showing significant anomalies, especially in France, Spain and northern Italy. And, it says, Europe and the Mediterranean region could experience another extreme summer this year.

Seasonal forecasts show a warmer than average spring over Europe, while precipitation forecasts are characterized by higher spatial variability and uncertainty. Close monitoring and proper water use plans are required to deal with a season that currently has a high risk of being critical for water resources – states the report.

Read the full report to know more.

Applications are now open for the WIE2023 Awards

Do you want to showcase your technology or solutions for the water sector? Submit your application for the Water Europe Innovation Awards 2023.

The WIE Awards give experts the opportunity to excel in their respective fields of specialization in one of the five categories and get the chance to be awarded during the Water Innovation Europe 2023 conference, happening on June 20-22. The deadline for the application is May 14th. Check all the info here. 

Awards Categories
🏆 Global Water Challenges Award
🏆 SME Award
🏆 Digital Water Award
🏆 Water Technology & Infrastructure Award
🏆 Water Governance Award

Joint statement: The polluter-pays principle should remain at the core of the Union’s wastewater treatment legislation

Brussels, 16 March 2023 – A large group of stakeholders representing drinking and wastewater service providers, local public utilities, local and regional governments, environmental civil society organisations and water-related innovation industries unite their voice to support the financing mechanism proposed by the European Commission to ensure a fair and equitable distribution of the costs involved in removing micro-pollutants from wastewater in the proposed revision of the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive (UWWTD).

On 26 October 2022, the European Commission adopted a proposal to update rules on collecting and treating urban wastewater in order to better protect the health of Europeans and the environment. This proposal plays a crucial role in the Union’s objective to achieve a pollution-free environment by 2050, notably in addressing for the first time micro-pollutants that are frequently found in water bodies across Europe and have negative impacts on the environment and human health.

In its proposal, the Commission makes selected sectors contribute to the costs of upgrading wastewater treatment plants to treat harmful pollutants that are released from the use of their products based on the Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) principle. The scheme focuses on the pharmaceuticals and the cosmetics sectors, which are jointly responsible for 92% of the toxic load in wastewater.

The undersigned organisations strongly welcome this proposal to make producers contribute to the cost of removing substances harmful for the environment from wastewater and jointly stress the crucial need to maintain the EPR scheme in the final text negotiated between the European Parliament and the Council. The scheme is a powerful mechanism that allows for a fair distribution of wastewater treatment costs between polluting sectors and urban water users and mitigates the impact of the Directive on water affordability for households in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.

The EPR scheme is based on the polluter-pays principle, which is the cornerstone of the Union’s environmental policy as per Article 191(2) of the 2007 Treaty on the Functioning of the EU. A special report of the European Courts of Auditors published in 2021 pointed out the inconsistent application of the polluter-pays principle to the water sector despite significant operational and investment costs. The annual average expenditure on water supply and sanitation is of €100bn across the EU and will need to increase by over 25% to comply with the EU legislation on wastewater treatment and drinking water (€253bn, EU28 aggregate figure).

There is compelling evidence on the existence of micro-pollutants from pharmaceutical and cosmetic products in wastewater and it is possible to track pharmaceutical and cosmetic residues in wastewater to specific products through water-smart tools.

According to the Commission, the cost of the proposed EPR scheme to the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries would be limited with an increase in prices or an impact on profits estimated at less than 1%. In no case will the proposal hinder the accessibility or affordability of medicines; the maximum average increase in the cost of pharmaceuticals is estimated at €1.9-2.4 per year/per person by 2040.

EPR schemes for collecting and treating solid waste stemming from the use of pharmaceuticals are already in place in several Member States with no effects on affordability or access to medication, as the costs of the scheme are marginal in comparison to the price of medicines and the profit margins of pharmaceutical companies.

The EPR scheme could also act as an incentive for pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries based in the EU to develop ‘greener’ molecules, which would give them a competitive edge over competitors in third countries, and reduce pollution at source in line with the European Green Deal.

Last but not least, the implementation of an EU-wide EPR scheme is also a matter of internal market functioning, as it creates a level playing field for the industry across the EU, thereby reducing the risk of environmental dumping.

As a conclusion, the EPR scheme is an environmentally effective, economically efficient, and socially fair financing instrument to address the treatment of micro-pollutants in wastewater and avoid their discharge into receiving water bodies for the benefit of our health and the one of our ecosystems.

The undersigned organisations call on all policymakers at European and national level to safeguard this approach in the Commission’s proposal to ensure a fair transition towards a more sustainable, toxic-free Europe.

Signatories

Aqua Publica Europea
Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR)
EurEau
Eurocities
European Anglers Alliance
European Environmental Bureau (EEB)
Health Care Without Harm (HCWH) Europe
SGI Europe
Surfrider Foundation
Water Europe

New Matchmaking Tool for booking for Water Market Europe B2B meetings

All registrants of the Water Market Europe 2023 event will have the chance to use the new matchmaking tool that Water Europe will make available next week for booking their B2B meetings during this edition of Water Market Europe, taking place in Brussels on 14 and 15 of March 2023.

Through the new matchmaking tool, attendees will be able to match with their business partner based on their company key activities, description and job function. The software will provide the opportunity to suggest digital or in-person meetings and start tailored collaborations with the matched profiles.

The matchmaking tool is planned to be launched soon.  If you don’t want to miss the opportunity, click here and register for the Water Market Europe event.

Alain Dedieu, President, Water and Wastewater Segment at Schneider Electric & Water Europe Board Member of Multinational Corporations

You are a Water Europe board member of college A ‘Multinational Corporations’- Could you tell us what drives you personally to have this role at Water Europe? What do you want to achieve?

There are many reasons, but if I must select one, it is accelerating change towards sustainability in water. Until February this year, sustainability in Europe was more about how we are going to make the process of water net zero by 2030. Net zero means changing the source of energy, reusing renewable energies, and having a roadmap to conduct the necessary implementations. Since February 2022, utilities have started to ask themselves ’How are we going to be able to reduce the energy cost by the end of the month?’ The energy cost of the municipalities and utilities is 65% and above of the cost.

Personally, with my current role as Water and Wastewater Segment President at Schneider Electric, I believe that I gather a seasoned experience in all the five continents in industrial automation and in energy management that can bring an added-value discussion and influence on how to apply combined Process & Power Performance optimization. If something is working somewhere in the world, I want Europe to study the tested, validated practice and apply where it makes sense allowing much more agility for European countries to make the transition.

Why is it important for Schneider Electric to be part of Water Europe?

Schneider is a French company part of CAC 40 and committed to many non-profit entities that are helping to push public and private sector toward more efficiency, resilience and overall sustainability. We have been watching Water Europe’s work promoting across borders the European vision for water supply and sanitation by 2030 with several key materializations across the years. Just like Water Europe, Schneider is accountable for making innovative contributions, and by being part of this association and its ecosystem, we hope to support solving major European water problems.

Which ones do you consider the biggest challenges of the European water sector, at the moment, and how do you see us overcoming them?

If you would ask me one year ago, I would answer differently. Today the challenges countries and respective utilities face in Europe is not anymore about ‘Let’s start the roadmap for 2040’. It’s how they can first reduce the energy of an energy saving programme by 20% now, and how they can reuse the energy they are generating in their waste process. In countries like Italy, the energy cost has been multiplied by four and in Germany, the cost of energy for the water operations has been multiplied by six.

Another issue is how we are going to reduce non-revenue water. e.g. the leaks, the evaporation, poor processes etc.

At the end of the day, it’s all about resource management. Resources are scarce. And how do we help companies that want to be more efficient and resilient? We cannot continue to have water management based on a continuous process that sees water as infinite. Currently, the processes must adjust the water and treatment of the wastewater according to what is happening in the environment. And it needs to take into consideration periods when the cost of energy is lower. One example we started to observe is the treatment of the water during the night, where the cost is lower and then, storing it during the day. It’s all about designing the process with resilience and efficiency as a master process. Efficiency is, traditionally, a combination of process optimization and resource optimization.

The solution to manage water resources in Europe and across the world lies in digital technologies. Digital enables visibility of what’s happening in real assets, visibility around measurements, performance, situation. The second benefit of going digital is the capability to manage complex situations and to be more predictive using Artificial Intelligence.

We have seen that the water industry is not just a plant or a pipe. It is an ecosystem. Thus, data will be able to remove the existing silo effects in water.  This is mainly because for a utility to be capable to correctly manage your plant, they will need to know the weather forecast.

If we want to change the other hour/day/month, the correct management of the resource should be secured with a GIS system, connectivity and information about the price of the energy.

At the end of the day, the solution is well beyond developing new pipes and securing leaks. It’s about having new technologies around filtering on micro filtering. But then again, to have a holistic approach to the water ecosystem, the biggest transformation of the water sector will be around implementing digital platforms.

Building a Water-Smart Society is our vision. Which actions shall we prioritise to make this happen?

Data gathering and data management. Gathering data to feed the process and adjusting the process according to real-time data. Water must become a data-driven business.

Change management. The water industry is ageing quickly because in the last decades, it hasn’t created attractiveness for the young generations. But that doesn’t need to be the case any longer. With metaverse, for instance, plants are being shown in front of the screen and there is a 3D simulation of the plant, and an operator can go everywhere, having access to more information than he could when he was looking directly at the motor.

Therefore, first, we see the generation of people that are not digital native and are both reluctant and lacking skills. With the new generation getting to the market, utilities and municipalities need to recruit new people because the movers are going out soon and understand that the new generation will not work the same way they were doing before.

The second priority is cybersecurity. Cyber securing your processes needs to become a master process. As soon as you digitize a system, at some point, you are connecting to the cloud and with that connecting your system to the external world.  

Subsequently, every company in the world now must develop a cybersecurity plan to be as protected as it could be in this domain. We have service providers, we have solution providers, we have consultants that can help companies to make the transition. This is part of the basics of any business.

Hans Goossens, WE President’s Editorial, February 2023

Dear Water Europe friends,

The month of February has been a month of preparations. Preparations for the events already happened and the ones we have already on the horizon. Earlier this month, we held the webinar ‘Biologically inspired design for a Water-Smart Society’’. With the presentation of the keynote speaker, Alessandro Branciardi, we were reminded how, most of the times, nature finds very ingenious systems to cope with the challenges arising. Water is part of nature, and no matter if we have different disciplines, the more we observe nature, the more we see that its systems are circular in design. This should be our inspiration on how to make our systems resilient.

When it comes, now, to our important dossiers, Water Europe released this month an article on EURACTIV titled Transforming water risks into the industry’s opportunity for the next decade. The revision of the Industrial Emissions Directive is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to turn water risks into industrial opportunities and preserve the European industries’ competitiveness from water risks. At the same time, the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive is our focus, and following the position paper released some time ago, Water Europe continues to work closely with all the relevant stakeholders to ensure a green, circular and smart Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive.

We are a breath away from March that will mark, at least, three important occasions, our next Water Market Europe event happening in Brussels on the 14-15 of March, the reveal of our new vision and our participation in the UN 2023 Water Conference. We couldn’t be more excited to have our new Water Europe vision ready for the conference. The value of water is at the core of our updated document, and this is what we are also going to bring forward at the UN 2023 Water Conference, through a series of activities and events, organised together with our members. Look forward to meeting and discussing with many of you over the next weeks.

9th International Conference on Materials Science and Smart Materials 2023

Representatives of the iWAYS project will be co-chairing the 9th International Conference on Materials Science and Smart Materials – MSSM 2023, on 19-21 June in Reggio Emilia, Italy. The MSSM 2023 will provide a forum for both academic researchers and industrial practitioners from around the world to present papers on recent developments in the fields of Materials Characterisation, Design, Development, Manufacturing and Application.

iWAYS project coordinator Prof. Luca Montorsi from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and iWAYS technical director Prof. Hussam Jouhara from Brunel University will co-chair this 2023 edition of MSSM in the beautiful city of Reggio Emilia in Italy on June 19-21 and welcome research papers by internationally recognised experts, as well as young scientists working in the field of Materials Science and Smart Materials. To read more about the event, click here.

New intoDBP project kicked off in Madrid

On the 26^th and 27^th of January 2023, the intoDBP project officially launched its activities in the city of Madrid, Spain. The four-year project steps in to develop, test, scale-up, validate, and benchmark innovative tools and strategies to protect catchments and minimize human exposure to disinfection byproducts (DBP) under current and future climates. The consortium is led by the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA) and consists of 16 partners, among which researchers, small and large enterprises, communication experts and public services who have joined forces to generate interdisciplinary solutions, that will result into a renewed perspective of drinking water surveillance.

The first day of the kick-off meeting started with a general overview of the project, presented by Maria José Farré, the intoDBP’s coordinator and was followed by a presentation from each partner, regarding their role and contribution to the project. During the afternoon, partners had the opportunity to visit the project’s pilot 4, the drinking water plant of Canal de Isabel II, where surface water is treated through different stages.

The second and last day of the kick-off meeting introduced the intoDBP’s four case studies across Europe where the project will implement and validate its cross-cutting products. The final part of the morning allowed partners to initiate their collaboration and brainstorm ideas, through fruitful discussions held between the Working Packages.

The intoDBP project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement n°101081728. To follow the project’s updates, please check its Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

What Europe must learn from the Oder River disaster

Last year’s Oder River disaster shall lead EU policymakers to a better recognition of water risks in the Industrial Emissions Directive. A EU analysis recommends key improvements in terms of water quality monitoring and data transparency that would have limited the damages of this accident.

One of the worst disasters in the history of European rivers happened last August. In the Oder River, which rises in the Czech Republic, flows through western Poland, and forms a large part of the border between Poland and Germany, 360 tonnes of fish were killed, and severe ecological impact extended along 500 km. These damages are mainly due to an algal bloom releasing toxins that killed fishes and other taxa.

However, it is now clear that this environmental disaster had anthropogenic factors. Such a huge increase in salinity in such a short time period of two days is not possible under normal conditions, as points out a EU analysis from DG ENV, JRC, and the EEA. This is characteristic of a discharge from an upstream industrial or municipal source. In this respect, the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) reveals 34 facilities with chloride discharges in the Oder relevant catchment for the years 2018-2020.

The recent Oder disaster shall urge EU policymakers to better address water quality and emissions from industrial plants. The Industrial Emissions Directive is the main EU instrument for this purpose and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve water-related risks assessment. It is then a paramount weapon against the reoccurrence of such disasters. Increasingly severe and frequent dry periods due to climate change will lead to more and more prolonged periods of low water flows which amplify the risks of similar accidents for EU rivers. Tackling rivers salinity due to industrial effluents is all the more necessary for reducing risks since nearly 60% of EU rivers are not in good ecological status, as the Oder where it was precisely what led to the algal bloom.

While there is a need for a better regulation of industrial emissions to water, Europe shall also learn other lessons from the Oder disaster. In particular, the lack of implementation of advanced monitoring solutions is presented by the EU analysis as a main cause of the extent of the damages. A better tracking of the event’s progression through accurate details on emission points would have been made possible by strict monitoring requirements for each industrial installation. For early responses to such events, the IED shall also promote the implementation of continuous and precise digital monitoring systems of water quality. In this regard, it is one of the key recommendations of the EU report and related solutions already exist thanks to EU-funded RTD projects.

The second main recommendation by experts from the European Commission and the EEA is to improve communication, mainly between national competent authorities as well as to the public. This lack of data sharing hampered efforts to limit the disaster. For instance, an efficient transparency of the data would have been crucial in preparing downstream authorities to the upcoming impacts, since studies demonstrated that water takes only 12 days to travel downriver in the Oder. Therefore, mandatory notifications between relevant authorities, transboundary cooperation, and free access data for the public shall be all considered within the IED. The EU report also recommend making publicly accessible inventories of all industrial discharges and emissions, which can especially improve the verification of the existing permits for the discharge of wastewater into rivers.

In the context of the recast of the IED, leaving the business-as-usual approach is the only way to avoid further disasters in all EU rivers that share the same risks with the Oder. Promoting monitoring solutions and water-related data transparency in the IED is also a key driver for industries’ competitiveness in the next decade.

EU Commission refers Belgium for failing to protect its population and ecosystems from nitrate pollution

On the 15th of February, the European Commission decided to refer Belgium to the Court of Justice of the European Union for failing to protect its population and ecosystems from nitrate pollution. Particularly, as required under the Nitrates Directive , the Walloon region failed to take sufficient action on nitrate pollution.

The directive aims to protect surface and ground water against pollution from agricultural sources. The European Green Deal, with its Zero Pollution ambition, calls for air, water and soil pollution to be reduced to levels no longer considered harmful to human health and natural ecosystems.

Read the full news at the official website.