Excellence for Water Technology

Sustainability & Innovation

The Countries vying to be the Centres of Excellence for Water Technology

By Will Henley via theguardian.com

Countries and cities around the world are competing to play host to the world's most innovative sustainable water companies

The technocrats of Masdar could hardly be accused of a lack of ambition. The five-year-old Masdar City in Abu Dhabi, which aims to be the world's first zero-carbon city, aspires also to be a global centre of excellence for innovative clean-tech water companies.

"Masdar can be the Silicon Valley of water," says Mohammed El Ramahi, Masdar's head of utilities and asset management. He is certain that this part of the Middle East can be to water what California is to the microchip.

With predictions that the water tech industry – covering desalination, purification, recycling, rainwater collection and hydro-electricity – will be worth $1tn by 2020, it is perhaps no surprise that Abu Dhabi wants in on the action.

An image of the International Renewable Energy Agency HQ to be located in Masdar City, the world's first carbon-neutral, zero-waste city with aspirations to be a global centre of water tech excellence. Photograph: Tgprn United Arab Emirates/AP

Revolutionary technology

Finding an affordable desalination technology to transform the planet's vast supplies of unusable, salty water for consumption and re-use by people and industry is the modern alchemist's dream.

But El Ramahi is confident that Masdar could be the birthplace for such a revolutionary technology. "It will create desalination solutions which are completely viable and capable to be utilised in less fortunate communities," he says.

Masdar is not alone, however. There is competition all around the world, including major clusters in the US, such as Ohio, Massachusetts, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and California; Ontario and British Columbia in Canada; and Singapore, Denmark and the Netherlands.

"The prize is an enormous economic engine that [will] create jobs – expensive jobs," says Laura Shenkar, principal of Artemis Water Strategy, a consultancy based in San Francisco.

Shenkar organises The Artemis Project Top 50, an annual ranking of the most promising water tech companies. The United States claimed top spot in 2012, being home to 29 of the top 50. Five came from Canada, five from Israel, four from Australia and three from Singapore.

It would be wrong, however, to write off the other territories. Singapore, for instance, despite claiming just three top 50 companies, is home to a cluster of more than 100, as well as 25 research centres.

With the right ingredients, Shenkar says – venture capital, academic institutions and fierce competition – a jurisdiction will attract emerging tech companies and lay an "egg for economic growth".

Long-term investment

According to Ian Elkins, editor of Global Water Intelligence, a news and information service, the biggest challenge facing any new water technology, no matter how brilliant it may be on paper, is the time it takes to get a technology to market.

Finding a jurisdiction where the local water utility company is open-minded about providing a test bed for new technologies is therefore incredibly important for emerging companies.

"Unlike the telecommunications or IT sectors, where take-up of new technologies is virtually instantaneous, it generally takes at least seven years for any new water technology to gain serious traction. During that time it will need sustained funding to keep it going through to commercialisation," Elkins says.

"Supportive local utilities such as Mekorot in Israel and PUB in Singapore can make the difference by providing testing and validation opportunities within the context of a working utility. The resulting performance data can then be used to support the commercialisation of the technology," he adds.

Innovation by necessity

North America may have topped out in the Artemis Top 50, but John Carr, general manager of water and mining at Clean TeQ, an Artemis Top 50 firm based in Melbourne, Australia, specialising in ion exchange and membrane processes, contends that those jurisdictions facing serious water scarcity issues may, in the long term, have the edge.

"Necessity is the mother of invention, so areas where water availability is low tends to lead to the highest level of innovation," Carr says. For such reasons, Australia should be watched closely, he suggests.

"Australia ticks all the boxes for an innovation hub for water technology. It has an advanced R&D base with its universities and institutions, strong government support, several large industries with high water demand and water availability which ranges from scarce to drought," he adds.

In the same vein, the rain-starved Middle East could well become home to several powerful water tech industries.

Israel is one country in the region playing host to a successful cluster. The state recycles around 85% of waste water and its 300 or so water companies, specialising in desalination, waste water and irrigation technologies, earn it more than $2bn annually in exports.

"Slowly, large parts of the world [are] understanding what Israel had to understand 60 years ago," says Gilad Peled, director of agro-technology, water and environment at the Israeli Export Institute, adding that revenue has "increased by 300% in the last five years".

"To understand what makes Israel a centre for excellence for water technologies you have to go back in history and understand the geography of the country – Israel is a small country with small resources of sweet water and a fast growing population," he says. "It is not only the technologies that attracts global interests but the different way of thinking."

Water ambition

Peled and his team are gearing up for WATEC 2013 in Tel Aviv in October, a conference designed to showcase its expertise in the water tech sector. The last event in 2011 attracted 20,000 participants, including 5,000 from overseas.

Peled hopes Israel will one day be seen as "the Silicon Valley of water". "We at the Israeli Export Institute will continue to do everything to reach this dream."

Meanwhile, Masdar is similarly ambitious. Where will the nascent city's water tech industry be in 10 years' time? "On the moon – if not higher," replies a supremely confident El Ramahi.

• This article was amended on 16 July 2013 to reflect that Masdar City is five years old and not seven as originally written.