The research report, entitled ‘High and Dry: How Water Issues Are Stranding Assets’, identifies the deep implications of these stranded assets for the global financial sector across major sectors of the world economy. This is causing billions of losses among global companies, with around US$15.5 billion either already stranded or at risk, according to the report.

The report presents four case studies from sectors with high levels of water usage, specifically oil & gas, electric utilities, coal, and metals & mining. The case studies include the Keystone oil pipeline in Canada, the Pascua-Lama gold mine on the border of Chile and Argentina, Adani Group’s Carmichael coal mine in Australia, and the Oyster Creek nuclear plant in the US. However, these case studies most likely represent just a small number of projects potentially affected, the report notes.

Although the top 20 financial firms have provided US$2.5 trillion in bond, loan, and equity financing over the past decade, many institutions are still largely unaware of the problem, according to the analysis. One-third of companies are not assessing the impact of water issues on their activities, it notes.

The report recommends three key actions for financial institutions.

One is assessing risks and impacts using new tools to identify risks at different levels, bearing in mind industrial, company, stock, and geographical factors.

Another is disclosure of data in order to increase the level of transparency, which is critical to understanding water risks, ahead of likely rulings by regulators, who are already creating mandatory disclosure requirements relating to environmental crises.

The third recommended key action is management of risks and impacts through the creation of an engagement strategy to communicate the need for companies to address the water crisis.

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In particular, the report considers how the European Union and the European Parliament can increase support for non-EU countries facing problems around provision of drinking water for all citizens. Such problems often result from competing water uses and poor enabling environments and power dynamics, and where water use in one sector can have adverse impacts on others.

Currently, efforts towards ensuring that everyone in the world has access to drinking water are frustrated by competing uses between agriculture, energy, extractive and other industrial activities relying on large quantities of water resources. Because the global economy facilitates foreign activity and business in these sectors, this often has the knock-on effect of generating concerns around the local availability of water for human consumption and its quality.

In particular, the report examines the impacts of agriculture and industry on drinking water availability at household level, and considers the involvement of states and businesses in large-scale agricultural activity and industry, and the resulting impacts on the right to drinking water.

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The ‘Water for Coal’ report was prepared by Natural Economy and authored by Dr Ian Overton, adjunct associate professor in water resources at the University of Adelaide’s Centre for Global Food and Resources. Among its findings is that the industry uses 383 billion litres of fresh water per year, equivalent to the domestic use of 5.2 million people.

The report also notes that coal power uses 120 times as much water as wind or solar to produce the same amount of electricity. Coal mining and coal-fired power consume around 4.3% of all water used in New South Wales and Queensland, and withdraw 30% as much water as agriculture, the report finds.

Commenting on the report in a statement from ACF, its chief executive officer, Kelly O’Shanassy, said: “Not only do coal mines and coal-fired power stations consume vast quantities of water that could otherwise support people, wetlands and wildlife, but the coal industry also contaminates water, leaving toxic ash dams and leaching poisonous water into creeks and rivers.”

Coal mining has become controversial in Australia. Recent developments have included the Carmichael mine of India’s Adani Enterprises. Last year, Reuters reported Australia as “the world’s largest exporter of coal”.

“Coal mining in Australia already faces a bleak future as the world acknowledges the enormous threats posed by global heating. The coal industry does not always pay a fair amount for the water it uses. Adani’s mine was granted a 60-year licence to take unlimited groundwater, virtually for free,” said O’Shanassy in the statement.

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Other corporate sustainability aims are to move entirely to ‘green’ power and to achieve zero waste to landfills across the company’s global manufacturing operations, as well as doubling the number of women and underrepresented minorities in senior leadership roles and scaling the impact of its supply chain human rights programmes.

Manufacturing semiconductors is a water-intensive process – ultrapure water is used to remove impurities from the silicon wafers, and industrial and reclaimed water is used in Intel’s manufacturing plant systems.

According to the company, it has spent 20 years refining its water use and it says it has been able to restore about 80% of its original water use to the community. The focus now is on achieving 100% restoration.

The company says it funds collaborative projects to support local watersheds, with the aim of restoring water in amounts equal to the water it uses to close the gap in its water balance. According to Intel, these projects are either focused on agriculture, conservation, or in-stream flow protection, and they support communities, the economy, and the environment and address local water issues.

To date, Intel says it has funded projects that will restore an estimated 1.8 billion gallons per year (BGY) of water when complete. Of these, 11 projects were finalised by the end of 2019 and 1 BGY of water was restored in 2018 and 2019 together. The company has pledged to evaluate and adjust its volumetric target annually, because its future water consumption may change.

Locations of the 24 water restoration projects funded so far include Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Oregon in the US, and in Bangalore, in India. The company is building a massive new water recycling plant in Hillsboro, Oregon, which will be able to recycle 1 billion gallons of water a year when complete in 2021.

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The investments planned already include £2.1 billion to strengthen the resilience of its network and reduce leakage.

In a statement online, Steve Robertson, CEO of Thames Water, said: “Our proposals are a true reflection of what our customers have told us they want to see and we appreciate all the time they’ve taken to give us their opinions and advice.”

The firm was fined £120 million earlier this year after the UK’s national water regulator, Ofwat, found the firm lacked sufficient oversight and control of its leakage performance.

Around a quarter of the water treated by the company is currently lost, although the firm has said its new investment will reduce leakages by 15 percent and cut the proportion of incidents related to pollution by 18 percent.

Thames Water is one of several large firms across England and Wales expected to hand over its plans for this period to the regulator. Other companies include Severn Trent and United Utilities, which plan to reduce the average water bill by 5 percent (Severn Trent) and 10.5 percent (United Utilities).

Robertson said customers of Thames Water can expect bills to flat in real terms over the planned five-year period. Shareholders meanwhile will receive annual distributions of around £20 million, which he said would reflect the company’s priority of improving services.

Ofwat’s 2019 price review requires that businesses detail exactly how they intend to meet the needs of their customers. This includes outlining their investment strategy, charges to customers and resilience measures.

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Accordingly, spending on waste water treatment chemicals is likely to rise over the coming years, more so than recent growth recorded in the industry.

The paper, commissioned by 6Wresearch, identified several factors that are contributing to the fast progression of the market. It sighted increasing water scarcity and a growing population combined with various prospective commercial and residential projects which were powering demand for waste water treatment chemicals in South Africa.

“Upcoming projects, such as US$249 million Water Treatment Plant for Gauteng and US$416 million Desalination Plant Project, would increase the demand for waste water treatment chemicals in the country,” said Nikhil Jat of 6Wresearch.

“Moreover, in the 2019 national budget, the South Africa government has allocated US$4.2 billion for human settlements, water and electrification programs. Significant rise in spending on water related schemes and projects would have a positive impact on the growth of the waste water treatment chemicals market in South Africa during the forecast period.”

The Western Cape is expected to maintain its position as market leader in South Africa, due to several large projects in the pipeline such as the Western Cape Water Supply System Augmentation Project.

Devesh Kumar, Research Associate at 6Wresearch, believes it is also innovation which is driving growth in the sector.

“Leading players are introducing new and innovative products in the waste water treatment domain as well as due to dependency of the country over treated water, the market for waste water treatment chemicals in the country would grow at a healthy rate over the next six years.”

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The product, SmartWater, was created by software and technology SME InTouch Ltd. In a demonstration project in Bristol, it achieved savings of 50 percent and reduced problem gullies from 25 percent to 8 percent.

“SmartWater can typically save 30 percent of the cleansing budgets year-on-year and in time can be self-funding,” Joe Burns, Development Director at InTouch Ltd, told Cities Today. “There is a huge amount of potential for this technology and managed service, along with other smart city technologies, to both save valuable public money and improve our environment.”

Gully cleansing by highways authorities is typically done on a manual rota check or after someone has reported a blockage or flooding. Coupled with increased flooding risk due to climate change, InTouch has improved efficiencies of this routine task using a combination of IoT sensors and predictive software.

Research found that, when inspected, 80 percent of gullies are actually clean and running, meaning wasted time and unnecessary costs for local government. By using the new service, the highways authority can be alerted when a gully requires cleansing, as well as benefiting from flood alerts.

Burns believes the software will be at its most useful in urban environments because of the nature of gully asset management.

“It is arguable that greater benefits will be achieved from implementing SmartWater on urban and city streets than strategic highways,” he added. “This is because on strategic roads access is often more difficult and once traffic management is in place one does all the work one can within a specific closure; this is rarely the case on urban roads so the benefits of being able to target specific gullies can be fully realised.”

SmartWater was chosen this year to take part in the Telensa SmartCity project across two local authorities in Essex and Hertfordshire. The SmartWater IoT sensor is included within the smart street lighting trial, enabling councils to receive live data streams, which also include traffic, weather, waste bin and traffic updates.

Burns revealed that he is having a number of ongoing discussions with prospective clients in Northern Ireland and Scotland as well as a number of local authorities in England including Birmingham, Sheffield and London.

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The IWA is the largest international network of water professionals working towards a water-wise world and has staff and members in 130 countries. The association helps to share knowledge and best practice across borders, through events, congresses and research papers and works towards getting water on the global political agenda to influence better regulation and policy making.

Geotech joined the IWA as a member because of its interest in delivering highly accurate water monitoring technology, particularly for remediation and groundwater applications. By sharing ideas with other members in designated IWA Group forums, the company can not only provide answers for issues in other countries but Geotech can also develop its technology to be more in tune with the needs of global water professionals and the issues they are facing.

Mike White, territory manager from Geotech said: “The IWA is really important to Geotech, as we are doing more work in the waste water sector both in the UK and internationally. By becoming an IWA member, we can actually talk directly to other professional people working in the field, to find out where we need to improve and develop our products to be able to help them better monitor substances in water to create a more healthy and sustainable water future for communities around the world.”

As a QED environmental company, Geotech has invested time and resources over the years into developing state-of-the-art technology and programs to collect groundwater samples that have a true representation of groundwater situations. The company’s Senior Vice President and hydrogeologist, David Kaminski has been a key driving force in the industry for over 34 years and has been aptly recognised for his contributions in developing new devices and methods for groundwater sampling applications.

Geotech is a global manufacturer and supplier of portable and fixed gas analysers for the biogas, landfill, CO2 monitoring, groundwater and land remediation sectors. Beyond its market leading gas analysers for landfills and the biogas sector, Geotech also designs, manufactures and supplies a full range of environmental monitoring equipment.

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The nicknamed ‘Beast from the East’ caused by a blizzards blown west from Siberia produced sub-freezing temperatures before the thaw which burst water pipes and left 200,000 customers without supply for more than four hours.

Individual water companies faced several common difficulties under the conditions, such as the rural-urban divide of customers as well as topography. The regulator however said that, of an analysis of 17 companies, there showed “considerable variation in the quality of response from companies and this contributed significantly to the differences between these figures”.

The review, published on the events after the cold weather, attempts to “get to the bottom of what happened, to understand how water companies across the industry performed and, most importantly, to make sure lessons are learned and changes take place so that things are better for the future,” Ofwat said.

Companies such as Severn Trent Water and Thames Water were shown to have lacked appropriate planning for the events. A large number of minor pipe bursts – in some extreme cases as much as 85 percent of the total network – were not fully prepped, revealing the limits of firms’ safety mechanisms.

Thames Water has since repaid its users £120 million for its failure to control leaks.

The problems picked up placed a constraint on supply and indicated a further lack of real-time data on issues affecting the companies’ networks. This made it hard for the companies to identify problems in the first instance.

“As these companies had to design and deliver a response as it happened, they were slower and less effective than companies that already had robust plans in place and had better network data,” the report explained.

Better performing companies included Northumbrian Water, United Utilities, Wessex Water and Yorkshire Water, which employed real time information and monitoring systems to identify and manage the issues better.

According to the regulator, these firms “demonstrated resilience” in their systems, allowing them to move water supplies to areas of most need. They had effective governance processes with clear escalation routes through the company and key external stakeholders.

While the thaw affected fewer than 3 percent of all customers across the country, Ofwat said that, in absolute terms, a significant number of people were impacted for a long period of time. Interruptions went on for several days in some cases, and many customers who managed to keep their water supply experienced low water pressure.

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A formal agreement was signed at this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, held earlier in May 2018. Andrey Shishkin, Rosneft’s vice president, was joined at the signing by Jean-Louis Chaussade, CEO of SUEZ. The firms have a working history spanning a decade.

“Efficient and environmentally safe oil and gas production is only possible if the newest technologies are applied,” Shishkin commented.

The agreement is expected to enhance the treatment of wastewater at Rosneft’s refineries and petrochemical sites. SUEZ will provide the facilities for pre-treatment of water as well as biological water purification and desalination for the purposes of water reuse.

Cooling water systems and pilot testing could also be implemented where necessary, SUEZ has stated, and a further possibility to introduce the firm’s technologies for oil and gas production has been raised, specifically with regards to heavy water treatment in certain Rosneft sites.

In January 2018, Rosneft started treating its biological wastewater produce at its Bashneft-Ufaneftekhim facility, using SUEZ technology. This facility uses SUEZ’s membrane bioreactor and electrodialysis reversal (EDR) technology to treat a maximum of 84,000 cubic metres of wastewater daily.

Bashneft-Ufaneftekhim is Russia’s largest refinery and is affiliated with Rosneft. It treats up to 84 million litres of wastewater per day.

“Long-term partnerships like the one between SUEZ and Rosneft really show how two organisations can come together to drive forward technology and service programs that both support environmental sustainability and business initiatives,” Chaussade said.

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