Breadth and depth make water an attractive long-term investment

Here we underscore some of the overlooked headlines in regions worldwide that show the strong spending momentum in water-related projects. Funding flows are substantial in scope involving multi-decade, multi-billion investments spent on solutions across the water value chain.

Severe rainfall and floods are becoming chronic for regions throughout Italy. The city of Bologna and the province of Ravenna in its Emilia-Romagna region were the latest hit with extensive flood damage because of severe storms. In response to a series of storms the last striking in September 2024, regional authorities are investing EUR 1.2 billion for over 100 projects that will repair networks as well as build storm water infrastructure to prevent future floods and damage. Projects include raising river embankments, enlarging overflow tanks and canals and installing bulkheads in rivers. ¹

In other regions, heatwaves and droughts are exacerbating another of Italy’s chronic problems – water scarcity. To help alleviate supply strains, the national government has allocated EUR 600 million to modernize sanitation systems which should allow more wastewater to be used to satisfy industrial water demand.²

The township of Calvisano in the northern region of Brescia illustrates how communities are putting those funds to work. They are nearing completion of an EUR 81 million wastewater treatment plant to purify and reuse water for crop irrigation and industry.³ In addition to adding more wastewater plants, over the next five years, another EUR 321 million will be used to add more distribution mains as well as install smart metering systems to reduce water loss.

The city of Zurich, Switzerland’s most populous city, is investing EUR 186 million to redirect storm water from the Sihl River which flows through its center to Lake Zurich on its eastern edge. The project, which includes the construction of a 2 km long tunnel, is designed to minimize catastrophic flash flooding, the economic toll of which could extend well beyond EUR 7 billion.^4,5

Zurich’s city officials deemed the investments necessary despite the relatively low risk for a flood of this magnitude (estimated at once every 500 years). However, IPCC scientists warn that climate change is wreaking havoc on weather systems, making once rare events more frequent and intense.

The city of Dresden in eastern Germany is investing EUR 630 million to secure water supplies for Europe’s largest semiconductor cluster through 2038.⁶ The Silicon Saxony region is expected to double (and possibly triple) its water demand in the coming decades with consumption increases from market-leading chip makers such as Infineon, GlobalFoundries, Bosch and X-Fab. The region’s wastewater volumes are expected to rise 240% with the addition of a multi-billion euro wafer fab from the European Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (ESMC), a joint venture between Taiwan’s TSMC and several other European-based chip manufacturers.⁷

Investments will go toward capturing, cleaning and channeling surface waters from the nearby River Elbe for use by industrial users. It will also involve intensive wastewater treatment so that the majority (80-90%) of water withdrawn can be safely returned to the Elbe.⁸ Those include an 11km long discharge canal, new aeration basins, a blower station for biological waste treatment as well as new digestors and clarifiers for sludge treatment.⁹

The Île-de-France region in north-central France is going on the offensive against micropollutants. SEDIF (Syndicat des Eaux d’Île-de-France), the standard-setting water utility for the Paris region, is investing EUR 1 billion on advanced purification systems that remove micropollutants such as PFAS from tap water supplies. The new technique will combine nano-filtration and low-pressure reverse osmosis and will be capable of catching particles that are 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.¹⁰

PFAS levels have been a contentious issue worldwide after decades of research have shown them to be toxic to humans and the environment. For Parisians, the problem hit close to home when unusually high concentration levels were found in tap water samples. ¹¹ The new purification technology will be installed in two water treatment plants in Val-de-Marne and Seine-Saint-Denis, with upgrades made to a third in Mery-sur-Oise all of which serve Paris and surrounding regions. All facilities should be fully operational by 2032.¹²

PFAS are a family of chemicals still widely used across industries. However, rising concentrations in waterways and soils are concerning scientists, regulators and citizens. SEDIF will use the results from these plants to later deploy advanced techniques to remove PFAS at utility scales among its industrial manufacturers. ¹³

England’s swelling water problems have pushed Ofwat, the national water regulator, to allow record levels of spending to improve water infrastructure. The Asset Management Plan 8 (AMP8), published in December 2024, enables utilities to invest a combined EUR 126 billion (GBP 104 billion) in water projects over the next five years. That’s a 76% increase over AMP7, its predecessor covering 2020-2025.¹⁴

Chronic underinvestment in infrastructure and maintenance has resulted in a system that leaks up to 1 trillion liters of water each year (about a fifth of treated water supplies). ¹⁵ Moreover, extended summer heatwaves in 2022 and 2023 drained half of England’s reservoirs to exceptionally low levels and left London with just three and half weeks of water storage. ^16,17 The plan enables new reservoirs, which can store rainwater and runoff in wet periods to alleviate water shortages in dry ones, to be built, something that hasn’t happened in three decades. ¹⁸