The environment department has declared that much of southern and eastern England is in a state of drought. Many people think that climate change will make drought a much more common occurrence in many parts of Europe. So concerns over future water supplies could become at least as important as fears over energy resources.
The European Commission points to studies that suggest a 40% global water supply shortage by 2030. Scarcity and droughts already affect a third of the EU and are projected to increase because of climate change. “In northern Europe increased rainfall and floods already are impacting civil society and ecosystems, whereas southern Europe will probably suffer increasingly from water scarcity,” says the commission.
The EU is taking action. Next month should see the launch of a programme to boost innovation in water supply in the union, using substantial funding diverted from the structural and cohesion budgets. The European Innovation Programme (EIP) on water is intended to combine public and private sector expertise, in projects to tackle existing or expected water challenges.
The EIP is also intended to make Europe a world leader in water technology and services, by creating market opportunities and by contributing to the sustainable and efficient use of water. Guus Borchardt, water director in the European Commission’s environment arm DG Environment, says: “There will be spin-off effects in other sectors, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises.”
Europe’s water sector has an annual turnover of €100 billion, or about a third of the world market. Drinking and waste-water investment in the EU is an annual €10 billion.
Innovation is also intended to inform European water policy, which reflects growing concern worldwide about future shortages. Water quality problems affect public and environmental health and biodiversity, thanks in part to pollution, and it’s difficult throughout the EU to supply enough clean water at reasonable cost. The commission says that water problems are increasing as waste-water discharges rise and the ageing water system leaks. Meanwhile contamination and waste-water leakages and overflows mean public health risks.
The EIP is also needed to tackle problems such as climate change and to improve resource and energy efficiencies, says the commission, as water is integral to the extraction, refining, processing and transport of energy supplies and to much electricity generation.
“We need to kick-start innovation,” said William Neale, in the cabinet of environment commissioner Janez Potocnik, at a meeting on the proposed EIP. “We see resource efficiency being partly about competitiveness.”
Alan Seatter, DG Environment deputy director general, said: “There are many opportunities in the European market in this sector that are not being exploited.”
Blueprint for action
Late this year the commission will produce the strategic Blueprint to Safeguard Europe’s Water, looking ahead to 2050 but linked to EU strategy up to 2020, particularly the Resource Efficiency Roadmap. It will draw on: an assessment of national river basin management plans under the water framework directive of 2000; a review of EU action on water scarcity and drought; an assessment of the vulnerability of water resources to climate change and other man-made pressures; and a “fitness check” of regulation.
The proposed EIP falls under the Innovation Union, an October 2010 commission initiative under the Europe 2020 strategy. A first EIP on ageing has been launched and more EIPs are expected.
Summer submissions
If the European Council and the European Parliament approve the proposed EIP on water, a first call for project proposals is expected in July, so that work can begin in 2013. The funding is unknown, but expected to be “substantial,” said Robert Schröder of DG Environment.
Annual EU water R&D spending is €200 million of public money and €130 million of private money, according to Dr Richard Seeber, MEP and president of the European Parliament’s water group.
The EIP marks a change in funding from research to more commercial innovation. The first EIP projects will fall under the current Framework Programme for research, FP7. From 2014 when the next seven-year EU budget starts, funding is expected to be from FP7’s successor, the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for research and innovation.
“The people who have received money from Framework Programmes will have to make adjustments,” says Durk Krol, director of the Water Supply and Sanitation Technology Platform (WssTP), which the commission set up in 2004 to promote coordination and collaboration in water research and development. “The call on FP7 is already anticipating that change.”
The WssTP and other technology platforms, such as in steel, chemicals and textiles, focus on research but are intended to feature strongly in the EIP.
However, Professor Chris Fife-Schaw, head of psychology at the University of Surrey and part of the FP6 water project Techneau, says: “The EU for some time has not been very keen on funding blue-sky research.” Research councils in the UK and elsewhere are reducing support for pure research, raising doubts about future studies, says Fife-Schaw.
“Our turnover is more and more dependent on this EU funding with decreasing national funding,” says Willy van Tongeren, of the Dutch research firm TNO and technical coordinator of AquaFit4Use, a €15 million FP7 project aimed at making industry, mainly the paper, food, chemistry and textile sectors, less dependent on drinking water supplies for production processes.
The commission’s scientific officers keep a close watch on Framework Programme projects, says van Tongeren: “Sometimes it’s quite tough discussions.” They also make stringent financial checks: “But more important is that results have real practical effect. I think that is happening more.”
Fife-Schaw says of commission monitoring: “They take it seriously.” The commission took a year after the end of Techneau to finalise the €19 million budget (half from the project partners) and to evaluate the project results.
Gareth Jones, operations manager of the UK Centre for Economic and Environmental Development (Creed), says that the commission demands masses of information including articles of association of consortium members, pay slips, timesheets and clarifications of doubtful cost claims.
“The level of detail is unnecessary,” he says. “We waste so much time on administration.” However, he accepts that the commission is protecting public money: “Without that funding, these projects would not exist.”
Creed is part of the three-year Innowater project, which is developing tools and delivery mechanisms to support firms trying to sell technologies. The project has a budget of up to €3 million and runs until next February, with a possible six-month extension.
Horizon 2020 would, however, improve processes, claimed Luisa Prista, head of environmental technologies in the commission’s research and innovation directorate. “The route will be much easier, much easier,” she told the recent EIP meeting. “This is a new mentality.”
Strategy in the pipeline
If the water EIP and its funding are approved, November should see the launch of the programme’s strategic implementation plan. That would set priorities for three work packages – on urban water, rural water and industrial water – and for horizontal themes cutting across all three.
Although the work packages conflict with the river basin management approach of EU water policy, the commission says that this is a pragmatic approach to the coordination of related activities by mainly the same groups. Coordination between the networks will ensure that the river basin approach is still taken into account, it says.