The European Water Platform news

The European Commission is collecting data from key public procurers with potential interest in procuring new innovative solutions in the coming years. The results will help the EC to prioritise these needs in the upcoming years, in view of allocating funding for calls under the next Horizon 2020 Work Programme (2018 – 2020).

A total budget of circa €130 million is available under different 2016-17 Horizon 2020 Work Programmes (see the calls overview) to support groups of procurers that join forces to implement joint cross-border Pre-Commercial Procurements (PCP) or Public Procurements for Innovative Solutions (PPI).

It takes 5 minutes to fill in this survey to provide EAFIP some general information about your potential interest in innovation procurement in the following years. The information collected in this survey will only be used for the purpose of this initiative. Start the survey.

WssTP member and double-winner of the WssTP Water Innovation SMEs Awards, SansOx Ltd has been selected to participate in the EU Gateway | Business Avenues Environment and Water Technologies Business Mission, scheduled to take place in Singapore and Vietnam from 11-15 July 2016.

SansOx Ltd will be one of 38 companies from across the EU, which have the opportunity to gain first-hand experience of dynamic markets and establish business contacts with local companies via the Exhibition Days and business meetings in Singapore and Vietnam.

Moreover, in this program selected European companies have the opportunity to participate in up to three Business Missions to Korea, South East Asia and China for a combined total of five business missions. Each mission accommodates up to 50 European companies. SansOx will be one of those.

This was most welcome news for us, since it grants us a great chance of getting potential contacts and expanded visibility in this area, which will probably become important for SansOx. We have already gained useful contacts in the area, so we hope this will open more doors for business success there, says Mikael Seppälä, the Managing Director of SansOx Ltd.

For more information about SansOx, please visit its website.

The European Commission has today selected 189 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from 26 countries for a total of €8.7 million of funding under the latest round of the Horizon 2020 SME Instrument. The funding – €50,000 per recipient – will finance feasibility studies for new products.

The SMEs can also ask for up to three days of free business coaching. Among the projects receiving funding are a technology to turn residue from the wheat milling process into biodegradable packaging, a robotic inspection and cleaning system for solar panels, a low energy technology to capture CO2 from gasses, and a cost-reducing train maintenance system for early detection of wheel defects.

Since the launch of the programme on 1 January 2014, 1473 SMEs have been selected under Phase 1 of the SME Instrument. The SME instrument is implemented through one continuously open call with cut-offs four times a year. The funding is €50,000 under Phase 1 and up to €2,5 million under Phase 2. The next cut-off for Phase 1 is 3 May 2016.

For more information, please visit the EC’s webpage.

WssTP invites all European SMEs to submit their innovative breakthrough solutions or technologies for the 3rd edition of WssTP Water Innovation SME Awards. WssTP Water Innovation SME Awards will take place during WssTP annual stakeholder conference, Water Innovation Europe 2016, happening from 21 to 23 June 2016 in Brussels.

In the context of WIE2016, the top ten applicants will have the chance to present their innovations during the ‘Innovation and Technology Pitches’ session, just before the keynote speech of EU Commissioner for Research and Innovation Carlos Moedas on the first day of the conference. A speed dating session will follow, in which all applicants will have a table to discuss their innovations with other participants.

The four winning applications will be the ones characterized as best practices with high market potential in their field of application.

WssTP Water Innovation SME Awards are helping companies to sell and promote their innovation. Handed out by a respected and widely appreciated association gives more value to the innovation. These awards are proof to all stakeholders on the market that the innovation is a game changer that should be respected and taken seriously.

SansOx Oy, Finland

Winner of WssTP Water Innovation SME Awards 2014 & 2015

Find out more details about the Awards

APPLY NOW! Entries will stay open until 1st of May 2016!

The second edition of Water Tight is now available. The central theme of this edition is innovation. It is about how utilities and industries explore new ways to tackle supply-side, demand-side, regulatory or business-related challenges. The report focuses on the water sector from a global perspective, with country specific examples that provide a view of how some trends could work in a local setting.

Water scarcity, changing demographics and operational efficiency are top issues for the global water sector, which are amplified by the unpredictable impact of climate change. Demand for water continues to rise, declining water quality has grown to be a global concern, water loss through leakage continues to prove a major issue both in the developed and developing world, and the long-term impact of climate change is unpredictable which makes planning difficult.

Ultimately, the world needs flexible and resilient water systems that anticipate and monitor changes in circumstances. Sustainable management techniques need to be implemented to protect water cycles and reduce the impact of human activity on them. These need to go hand-in-hand with optimizing water and wastewater provision and consumption, and will require closer collaboration between utilities, users and regulators to incentivize water conservation, reuse and recycling.

Trends this year include:

• The value of water
• The value of data
• The power of the customer
• The need for operational efficiency
• The potential of technology
• The future of regulation
• New financing methods

You can find more information here.

To download the full report, click here.

• How can the value of water boost sustainable and economic growth?
• How can the water sector benefit from digital opportunies?
• How can we make the water-energy-food nexus work in practice?
• Can water be the enabler of tackling the global social and environmental challenges?

This and much more will be addressed during the 2016 edition of Water Innovation Europe dedicated to the hot topic ‘Water Smart: European Solutions for a smart water society’. 

Water Innovation Europe 2016 aims to bring to light clever solutions on how to face the water-related global challenges and lay the foundations for ‘Water-Smart Societies’. The third edition of the prestigious WssTP SME Innovation Awards will also take place during the first day of WIE2016, on 22 June 2016.

Our 3-day conference will offer an open platform for information gathering and networking among the most influential stakeholders from within and beyond the water sector.

Are you ready to leave your mark on our conference’s discussions?

REGISTER NOW!

Should you have any queries please do not hesitate to contact us.

On Wednesday 6th of April, the MEP Water Group, in cooperation with the Dutch EU Presidency held a public session dedicated to the theme ‘Water in the Urban Agenda’, with a link to ‘Τhe Leeuwarden Declaration’ at the European Parliament in Brussels.

The session was chaired by Esther de Lange, in her capacity as the President of the MEP Water Group and featured Aziza Akhmouch, Head of the OECD Water Governance Programme, Mario Cerutti, Senior Water Expert, Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure & Environment, Richard Elelman, Coordinator of the BlueSCities Project and Pavel Misiga, Head of the Water Unit, European Commission as speakers of the session.

Esther de Lange introduced the topic, pointing out that although 70 % of the Europeans live in urban areas, the visibility of water has been massively declined in cities and thus water-related challenges are growing.

Among other considerations put forward by the speakers were that water is key to sustainable cities and that there should be simultaneous action that links infrastructures, institutions, and information together.

One of the tasks included in the urban agenda is to influence the EU research agenda by linking urban cities and water. The DG Environment of the European Commission has expressed its commitment to support this initiative and connect water directors and regional levels of implementation. In addition to that, it was highlighted that action needs to be taken so that the urban water-related issues are included in the upcoming Horizon 2020 Work Programme.

Speakers identified as an important challenge the difficulty in linking the EU and local level implementation of policies as well as integrated water management in urban areas. Several interlinked components are quite often disconnected from each other, such as water management, landscape planning, energy, waste, etc.

Esther de Lange stated that ‘Although there are a lot of actions launched, it is difficult to link the EU level with the local level and this is a challenge we need to address together!’

SAVING –E project welcomes you on its brand new website, which got officially launched on the 1st of April 2016.

The website is designed to give a clear overview of the project objectives and disseminate all the project’s outputs and activities during the project. It is developed to provide an open platform for communication between SAVING-E project, the scientific community, water professionals and the general public.

The website contains all the essential information about the project itself and will be updated with the project’s progress, news and relevant events. Twitter and LinkedIn have been integrated into the project’s website, allowing users to share information across all major social networking sites.  In particular, the website is composed of 7 sections:

• Home: a general overview of the project
• Project: detailed information about the project (environmental problem targeted, goals, workplan, activities & results)
• Partners: composition of the project’s consortium
• Media Corner: the latest news, photo gallery and useful links
• Events Calendar: all the relevant upcoming events
• About LIFE: information about LIFE programme
• Contact: a contact form for all those interested in the project

Funded under the LIFE Programme, SAVING-E is a three and a half-year pilot project dealing with the transformation of the current wastewater treatment plants from being energy-consumers to be energy-sufficient or even energy-producer facilities. The consortium of the project is formed by the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), Depuración de Aguas del Mediterráneo (DAM), Agència Catalana de l’Aigua (ACA) and The European Technology for Water (WssTP).

The website is available in English and a Spanish and Catalan version will be soon online.

Visit the SAVING-E website at www.saving-e.eu

For further information, please contact

The 2016 call for papers for the European Waste Water Management Conference is now open. Aqua Enviro is inviting Abstracts from potential speakers who wish to present at this leading industry conference. The event is attended by over 200 professionals from the water industry and is recognised both for the quality of the individual presentations and the debates that follow these presentations.

The theme of the EWWMC is to provide delegates with information on: the latest treatment technologies; legislator changes impacting on the water industry; more efficient and effective design approaches; instrumentation and process control; modelling techniques and odour control.

Aqua Enviro welcomes case studies of successful approaches that recognize and deliver the key industry drivers of:

• consent compliance;
• energy saving and recovery;
• recovery of other resources;
• technologies for removing P and priority chemicals, and
• cost-savings across the whole treatment plant

If you are interested in contributing to the conference programme, please submit a 150 word abstract that includes:

• The title of the paper
• A summary of the contribution
• The key theme
• Authors names and contacts details for the corresponding author

Please email your abstract to [email protected] by Friday 1st April 2016.

For more information about the event, please visit the conference΄s website.

The upcoming World Water Development Report 2016 with as theme “Water and Jobs” will be launched on 22 March 2016 in Geneva during the official World Water Day celebrations held in ILO Headquarters.

The Report illustrates that nearly 3 out of 4 jobs of the global workforce (3.2 billion people) are moderately or highly dependent upon access to water and water-related services and therefore states that “Water is essential to decent jobs and sustainable development”. Water stress and the lack of decent work can exacerbate security challenges, force migration and undo the progress made in the fight to eradicate poverty.

To disseminate these key findings and to add momentum to the official launch event in Geneva (22 March), WWAP is organizing a briefing session for the representatives of the Member States at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris on 24 March and at the UN Headquarters in New York on 29 March. In parallel, various UNESCO Field Offices with their national partners and United Nations counterparts are organizing regional events on the topic ‘Water and Jobs’, spread over the globe. Almaty, Amman, Bangkok, Beijing, Brasilia, Cairo, Jakarta, Montevideo, Nairobi, New Delhi, Tashkent are a grasp of the locations where such activities are taking place.

For the first time, the WWDR will not only be launched in English but also in Spanish and French. The Executive summary of the Report will be made available in all 6 UN languages as well as in Italian, Portuguese and Hindi.

Read more

The ambitious five year project ‘AfriAlliance’, officially started with the kick-off meeting hosted by UNESCO-IHE on 2 and 3 March. All 16 consortium partners were present and set the scene for the project’s main objective: getting African and European stakeholders to work together on water innovation, research, policy and capacity development to increase the preparedness of Africa to address future climate change vulnerabilities.

Specifically with respect to water, Africa is going to be one of the regions most in need of innovative solutions for tackling water and climate change-related challenges. The fruitful interaction among relevant stakeholders in water management is of central importance when trying to generate, increase and exchange knowledge and innovation that address the demands of workable, effective solutions that have tangible impact.

A broad range of networks exists already, however, interactions on water and climate could be further enriched and strengthened within Africa and between Africa and Europe. AfriAlliance will therefore support existing networks in working together and share innovative solutions for key water and climate change challenges. The project, which is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme, fits well with the Commission’s interest to strengthen ties with Africa.

The 2-day kick-off meeting hosted by UNESCO-IHE gave EU and African AfriAlliance partners the opportunity to meet face-to-face, exchange ideas and to plan the first year of the project in detail. The topics that were discussed ranged from the thematic focus of the AfriAlliance Action Groups, the processes for identifying social innovations needs and innovative solutions, an innovative triple sensor approach to monitoring and forecasting, as well as the first AfriAlliance conference that will be held in Africa in 2017.

Dr. Uta Wehn, AfriAlliance project coordinator and Associate Professor of Water Innovation Studies at UNESCO-IHE: “The project has made an excellent start with this lively and engaging meeting. All partners are clearly committed to making the project a success and to strengthening African preparedness for the impacts of climate change.”

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 689162.

• African partners
• EU Partners

• AfWA , ICLEI , GWP, 2iE , WRC, CSIR , INBO, RIOB, WASCAL, WaterNet, AfriWater CoP
• WE&B , UNESCO-IHE, OIEAU, Akvo , ITC , WssTP , BothEnds

WssTP member, Pentair, was named “Water Innovator of the Year” during the Water Vision Congress, held February 18, 2016 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Pentair’s new X-Flow Helix™ technology was recognized for its ability to prevent membrane fouling and reduce energy use in the treatment of industrial wastewater.

Pentair’s innovative Helix technology design features a helical shape on the inside of a tubular membrane, creating continuous turbulence to prevent rapid fouling—a common occurrence in high-solids ultrafiltration. By introducing turbulence right at the membrane wall, the Helix technology provides continuous mixing and efficient removal of the cake layer that would otherwise reduce the membrane’s hydraulic permeability. The resulting higher permeate flow contributes to higher productivity and lower energy costs.

Jens Potreck, R&D manager, Pentair Flow & Filtration Solutions said :  “We are honored to have the Helix technology recognized by the Water Vision Congress.It is well-known that membranes are susceptible to quick caking. The dirt typically sticks to the membrane wall, resulting in a rapid productivity drop. Until now, this problem was usually solved by increasing the crossflow velocity. Put simply, the pressure is increased. However, this requires a lot of energy. The Helix technology addresses this issue by creating an eddy current inside the membrane, thereby causing the particles to not stick at all.”

Pentair was one of four finalists for the annual award, with the winner determined by both online voting by industry members as well as a panel of judges at the event. The Water Innovator of the Year award is part of the Dutch Water Vision Platform, which brings together experts, users and suppliers of products and services in the industrial water sector to contribute to transparent information about industrial water.

The Helix flux enhancement technology is now available for X-Flow’s 8 mm and 5.2 mm internal diameter tubular membranes. For additional information, including a performance comparison case study, click here.

After the successful edition of EIP Water Conference 2016 in Leeuwarden,  EIP Water has announced a call for a host city and conference partners for the fourth one-day EIP Water Conference which is planned to take place in June 2017. The conference shall be preceded or followed by side events and site visits. EIP Water is inviting all interested host cities and conference partners to develop and submit their proposals by the deadline of 29 April 2016.

The host city and conference partners of the EIP Water’s fourth Conference will benefit from the great visibility of the event within the European water sector as well as a number of high-level speakers and international participants. They will be able to showcase their experiences related to water & innovation and, if so agreed with EIP Water, suggest specific topics and challenges of their concern. The previous EIP Water conferences in Brussels (2013), Barcelona (2014) and Leeuwarden (2016) have demonstrated that the EIP Water conference is a brilliant opportunity for strengthening pan-European and global networking for boosting innovation in the water sector. Since 2013, the event has continued to increase with over 350 participants in Brussels in 2013, more than 400 in Barcelona in 2014 and almost 700 registered participants in February 2016 in Leeuwarden.

The organizers are confident that the 2017 conference will once again be an outstanding event for the European water sector and will contribute to removing innovation barriers and creating opportunities for more water innovation in Europe and globally.

To read the criteria for host city & conference partner selection, please visit the EIP Water website.

For any questions, please do not hesitate to contact 

Water PiPP project has now published a new practical guide titled ‘How-To Guide for Implementation of Innovation Oriented Public Procurement (IOPP) Procedures (EU Level)’ to help public and semi-public water authorities procure innovation in the water sector. Its objective is to provide a comprehensive overview of the legal and practical dimensions of IOPP. The guide provides:

• Room for Innovation by means of IOPP in the Water Sector
• Introduction to IOPP
• How to procure Innovation in the Water Sector Step-by-Step

As highlighted in the guide ‘Water innovation can apply not only to new sustainable technologies but also to new partnerships extending across public administration, research and industry: new business models and new forms of water governance that are not only innovative themselves but can also stimulate and support technological innovations’. Read more

To learn more about Water PiPP, please visit the project’s website.