Regions as motors of new growth through smart specialisation
WssTP was present at the event “Regions as motors of new growth through smart specialisation – Matching strategies for common goals” that took place on 8th of November 2013 in Brussels.
Herman Van Rompuy , president of the EU Council was the keynote speaker of the event, while the first panel of the session consisted of Maire Geoghegan-Quinn ,EC Commissioner for Research and innovation, Johannes Hahn ,EC Commissioner for Regional and Urban Policy, Kris Peeters, Minister-President of Flanders and Danuta Hübner, Chair of the Committee on Regional Development.
Maire Geoghegan-Quinn and Johannes Hahn emphasized the importance of regional initiatives and smart specialization to improve innovation and competitiveness in the EU and Commissioner Hahn especially underlined that every European region independent of its location has unique characteristics to offer.
WssTP encourages regions and actors to identify their unique water-related qualities and to capitalize on them through their smart specialisation strategy.
Read MoreWatec Israel 2013: Water Technology and Environment Control Exhibition& Conference
WssTP will be present at the International Conference and Exhibition on Water Technology and Environment control that will be held from 22nd to 24th of October in Tel Aviv, Israel. The conference will specifically emphasize on the technologies that can serve as the key to a much more efficient exploitation of natural resources (Water, Soil, Energy & Materials). Bringing together Israeli & international business executives, political decisions makers and leading researches, WATEC 2013 seems to be a significant event that aims to present the most advanced technologies and solutions from around the world.
To learn more, please click here
Read MoreFirst Coordination Meeting on WssTP Working Groups’ Leaders
On the 8th of October, the first Coordination meeting of the WssTP WG leaders was held in Brussels. Issues on the agenda were amongst others the strategy for the coming year, exchange and coordination of activities and the preparation for the upcoming H2020 calls. The leaders achieved to have a very constructive discussion, whose outcomes are very useful so as to shape and prepare the Working Groups’ session of WssTP workshop that will take place on 22nd of November in Brussels.
Read MoreMeeting of WssTP WG ‘Water & Industry’ with the EIP AG ‘Industrial Water reuse and Recycling’
The first combined meeting of WssTP WG on ‘Water and Industry’ after the summer holidays was held with success on 7th of October in Brussels. The meeting was well attended with 22 participants present.
Among the topics discussed were the water Calls for industry and WssTP’s water reuse report, while in the same context it was highlighted the cooperation of the new member ‘World business council on Sustainable Development’ with IWA on Water Reuse. WssTP also expressed its anticipation for a new legislation on water reuse from the European Commission.
In addition, the meeting decided to merge the WssTP WG ‘Water & SPIRE’ into the WG ‘Water and Industry’ as a sub-group. A detailed action plan of the WG was also set up for the next two years with regular meetings every 3 months.
The next meeting of the WG ‘Water & Industry’ is scheduled for the 10th of December.
More information, please contact Albert Jansen
Read MoreWssTP’s Workshop Ecosystems Services
The WssTP Working Group on Ecosystem Services met on 26th of September in Brussels. This was a first meeting to identify the competences of each participant of the Group, which would then determine the topics on which the Group will focus at this stage.
The meeting was also a very good opportunity to decide to work on collaborative EU projects and to liaise with SMEs so that technology transfers can occur.
More information, please contact Gaëtane Suzenet
Read MoreWssTP Water Reuse Report presented in the European Parliament!!
Rita Hochstrat from the WssTP WG ‘Water Reuse’ presented the WssTP Water Reuse report for the Water Group of the European Parliament in a session together with Henriette Faergemann from the Water Unit of DG Environment and John Fawell from the WHO.
The European Commission is currently in the process of developing a legal instrument on water reuse and WssTP’s report is considered an useful input for the preparatory process towards this legal instrument. A further meeting between WssTP and the EC is foreseen in the 2nd half of October to provide input for a possible future legislative initiative, resulting from the Blueprint for Water.
More information, please contact Rita Hochstrat and Thomas Wintgens
Read MoreMonaco International Forum on Water
[quote align=”right” color=”#999999″]Under High Patronage of His Serene Highness PRINCE ALBERT II of MONACO [/quote]
WssTP participated to the 1st Monaco International Forum (MIF) that was held on October 7, 2013 at Hotel Hermitage in Monaco. The specificity of the MIF is to focus on issues related to the environment and water, in direct connection with the recognized activities of the Principality since decades and which are reaffirmed every day with force by HSH Prince Albert II through his personal actions. The MIF is specifically aimed at creating a global human network based on trust and providing a framework for open discussion.
This forum was born from contacts between FIRMUS, a company headquartered in Monaco (and its subsidiary FIRMUS France) and SIMEV (Membrane Science applied to the Environment), a Chair from UNESCO (hosted by the Ecole Nationale Superieure Chemistry and the European Institute of Membranes in Montpellier).
This year’s theme: “A crucial issue for the next millennium: the water-energy nexus. How membrane technologies can meet the challenge?”, with three main topics: How to ensure the production of water and energy in countries that suffer from significant gaps? What solutions for the full recycling of waste (zero pollution and reuse)? Extraction of gas / oil shale: what to do with effluents?
Around 70 high-level participants coming from more 20 countries (Europe, Africa, United-States, Russia…)have joined this 1st edition. All have appreciated the high level of the discussion, the quality of the reception and expressed their interest for the next edition, thus bearing testimony of the interest of Monaco as a onestop place for this kind of event where it is a question of science at the service of society and environment.
Read MoreLaunch of ZELDA Project
ZELDA consortium has been successfully shaped and consists of WssTP, Abengoa Water, CTM and Fujifilm. Most current brine management strategies discharge brines into the environment and constitute one of the most important environmental impacts of desalination technologies, especially in those regions with high vulnerability to salinity gradients.
The Life+ ZELDA project (LIFE12 ENV/ES/000901), aims to demonstrate and disseminate the technical feasibility and economical sustainability of decreasing the overall environmental impact of desalination systems. It adopts brine management strategies based on the use of electrodialysis metathesis and valuable compound recovery processes with the final aim of reaching a zero liquid discharge process.
More information, please contact Xavier Martinez
Read MoreInterview with Oded Distel
[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]Current Trends in the Water Industry.
Interview with Oded Distel, Director of ‘Israel New Tech’
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Where is the world’s water industry headed? What are its most pressing needs, and what technologies, and companies, are most in demand?
We sat down with Oded Distel, Head of Israel’s national program for the promotion of Israel’s water and energy industries, to get his insight into the latest trends.
“The direction of the industry today is clearly maximizing resources,” says Distel. “Budgets are shrinking, or at least being very carefully watched, and those companies who can offer technologies that bring added value by being cost effective, will prevail. Today there is a growing understanding that all resources are precious – water, energy, even land. A company can offer amazing water technology, but if it requires a heavy budget, or high financial cost, or even a large amount of land to implement, it will find itself waging an uphill battle.” According to Distel, Israel is ideally placed in this arena, as resources (both natural and budgetary) have always been in scarce supply, and Israelis have had to be creative in developing not only effective, but efficient water solutions.
On a continuation of this theme, there is also growing awareness on the part of different industries that they must be efficient in their use of water resources. Industries like Mining, Oil & Gas, Food & Beverage and others, are massive consumers of water. Their growing interest in optimizing their use of water also creates opportunities for water technology companies. Israel NewTech has been working to bring Israeli water technology companies to these industries, through targeted business delegations, in Israel and abroad. Delegations from these and other industries, in search of innovative water technologies, will be visiting Israel in October for WATEC 2013, the international water exhibition and conference.
And which companies are raising most interest on the part of the water industry?
“Another growing trend in the water industry worldwide puts mathematical algorithms, and ‘big data’ to work in order to make water use efficient,” says Distel. Here too Israel is well-positioned, with a workforce highly skilled from Israel’s successful hi-tech arena, some of which is finding its way to cleantech. Distel points out Israeli companies including Arad, Bermad, Iosite, Peak Dynamic, Powercom and Takadu as some of the companies whichstand out in this arena. “There is a process of crossover happening between different industries: energy and water, hi-tech and cleantech…experience in one discipline lends to improving another. All of this makes for more effective, and more innovative, water solutions,” concludes Distel.
For more information on WATEC 2013, please click here
Read MoreWssTP-IWA collaboration on PROJECT INNOVATION AWARDS 2014
WssTP is very pleased to announce its collaboration with IWA for the 2014 edition of PIA Europe and West Regional Award Competition.
The 5th edition of this prestigious awards programme aims to bring prominence to innovative water and wastewater engineering projects around the world, highlighting them as models of engineering excellence and spreading broadly the knowledge of water science and management to the global water community. By submitting your project proposal in PIA, your organization’s capability and innovation in the field of water engineering will be highlighted on a global level.
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