Tag: Finance

Making  investment in water infrastructure bankable

~ Frederic ~ Leave a comment

Water forms the foundation of all natural systems. Its unique physical properties make it irreplaceable for energy transfer and ecosystem regulation—earning it the designation as “the bloodstream of the biosphere.” Beyond its ecological role, water is essential for human health and economic prosperity.

To secure reliable access to this vital resource, humanity has developed infrastructure with three core functions: storage, transport, and treatment. Water infrastructure is characteristically capital-intensive and long-lived, with high upfront costs that cannot be easily recovered if projects fail. In Europe, the Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC makes a distinction between services and uses.

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Investment needs in the municipal waste facilities to comply with targets set by the Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC

~ Frederic ~ Leave a comment

The Waste Framework Directive 2008/98/EC sets a target of 50 % of municipal waste to be recycled and prepared for reuse by 2020 in EU Member States, for at least four categories (i.e. paper, glass, metals, plastics) of waste. To this end, the EU budget strongly supported Members via Cohesion funds, Horizon 2020, LIFE, etc ( a total of EUR 4.9 billion was allocated by 17 EU Member States for the 2014-2020 period). EEA figure on the share of treatment methods of municipal wastes shows that very significant progress has been achieved over the 2004-2016 period .

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Benchmarking on the EU countries’ needs for investments in water infrastructure

~ Frederic ~ Leave a comment

The Drinking water Directive 98/83/EC (more) and the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive 91/271/EEC (more) lay down basic services requirements to be meet by the water operators across the European Union. Both were adopted in the nineties and will have to be updated in order to adapt to recent scientific evidences and new managerial approach.

The issue is not only technical but also political and financial since these two directives entail huge needs for investment in infrastructure water. Despite all the money made available by the EU regional funds for the Member states that joined after 2000, access to finance is often put forward to explain the distance to compliance or to raise concern about the capacity to comply with future regulations on water supply and sanitation.

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