Jo Jolly, director of Environment and Innovation at Ofwat, discusses how innovation and collaboration are transforming UK water systems to tackle key challenges such as leaks, emissions and pollution while building a sustainable future.
Water systems are a complex and nationally important network, with hundreds of thousands of kilometers of main membranes and wastewater pipes across the country’s length and width. Every day, each person in England and Wales uses an average of 152 liters of water. 15.3 billion liters of water will be dealt with some of the world’s most severe quality levels, and 11 billion liters of wastewater will be collected and treated in 9,000 sewage treatment works.
With water systems of this scale serving 26 million homes and businesses, it’s no surprise that there are challenges. Some are well known, including our waterways and the sea-filled sewage. While we are not paying much attention to other challenges in our water systems, we need to take action, such as reducing the sector’s significant greenhouse gas emissions, reducing leakage emissions, building circulations in wastewater treatment, and managing spills and pollution from agricultural systems and highways.
There are no silver bullets in any of these challenges. They need to work together and step changes across multiple sectors to achieve the necessary improvements, such as water treatment centres, sewerage plants, pipes, sewerage, around our homes and businesses, and land management, highway management, river-wide catchment areas. Innovation is essential to creating the water sector, and the entire water system is purpose-suited and ready to tackle future challenges head on.
Incentivize your solution
With this in mind, the OFWAT Innovation Fund was established in 2020 to strengthen the water sector’s ability to innovate and overcome the key challenges facing the sector. The £200 million fund is investing in joint projects that are working with water companies to work with innovators from various sectors to develop and deploy solutions to these challenges. The success of the first five years has resulted in the decision to extend the fund until 2030 to another £400 million.
Over 90 projects are funded to expand the innovation environment through four Water Breakthrough Challenges awarding water company-led consortiums (and a fifth set to announce winners in the spring), and the Water Discovery Challenge, which has supported new entrants into the water sector without partnering with water companies.
Innovations include shoeder “pipebots” that allow you to identify cracks from internal pipes before they break down, as well as gamification solutions to encourage consumers to use water more efficiently. It includes not only an approach to removing PFA from wastewater, but also a centre of excellence in cascades and a spring-like solution that helps you navigate innovators.
The question is, what’s next? Innovation is important, but the most important thing is to do with these innovations. It needs to be implemented and expanded. They need to have a positive impact on their customers, society and the environment.
This requires the possibility of factors beyond fundraising. In particular, high quality data and physical facilities are needed to safely test and prove the concept of technology. These are innovations in themselves, and are innovations that enable innovation.
There are three outstanding examples of innovation with the ability to create a cascade of change: Stream, National Leakage Research and Test Center (NLRTC), and Net Zero Hub.
Create consistent, open and transparent data
Stream is a collaboration between 16 of the UK’s 18 major water companies, supported by industry and civil society partners, including the Open Data Institute and Icebreaker One. It aims to unlock the possibilities of water data. It creates a platform that brings together standardized data from across the sector and is open to everyone.
An example of this behavior is the National Storm Overflow Hub, launched by Water UK in partnership with water companies and delivery partner Stream late last year. This hub provides an interactive map that anyone can see for the first time, near real-time data from all Storm Overflow sites in England and Wales. This is the most advanced runoff monitoring in the world. This is because innovators can be confident in their data and can use it to develop solutions when a problem can be measured comprehensively, consistently and transparently.
This data is already in use by a variety of organizations, including Sapphire, an AI technology from HR Wallingford. Sapphire was a recent Manchester Award finalist. It is a multi-year multi-year challenge award in science, innovation and technology, rewarding public benefits for a UK-led breakthrough. It aims to reduce storm overflow, agriculture and water pollution from urban spaces.
The observed data and the output of computer models are integrated into an AI platform, incorporating more pollution sources than traditional methods, producing faster results. The goal is to help water companies better understand the impact of storm overflows and manage their flows more effectively, ultimately improving water quality across the country.
Using Stream’s open data source is key to developing this technology and is a very realistic example of innovation that leads to innovation. As in the example of an overflow map, complex data can be open and consistent with data stored in separate locations (and in multiple formats). This is not only a timesaver, it also increases transparency. This is key to building both stakeholders and public trust.
This is important in overcoming the interconnected challenges facing the water sector. Incorporate examples of sewage overflow into rivers and streams. This is the output of a vast network that competes with system-wide challenges from upstream to downstream. Having open data from across the network allows innovators to provide comprehensive insight into the overall operation of wastewater networks, identify these issues and develop solutions that minimize situations where some of the network is overwhelmed and flooded with waterways.
We are limited only by our imagination. As the world runs on data, and at a ever-growing speed, there are endless leads. Hopefully, this innovation will stimulate the use of data to gather valuable and actionable insights across other sectors, and serve as a springboard for even more people.
Center to prove new anti-leak technology
The National Leakage Research and Test Center (NLRTC) is scheduled to break into the country this year. Once built, it becomes an important site for testing and proofing technology with the ability to drive leaks in AS real simulation of water networks. It is expected to be led by Northumbrian Water, working with 13 water companies and universities in Sheffield and Southampton, to play an integral role in promoting new solutions.
Currently, five-fifths of drinking water in the main network are lost to leaks. Leaks are at the lowest level ever, but this still represents a significant waste of water and energy, and can be done more to reduce this number. The challenge is that the traditional way of “hearing” the sounds of leaks can get us so far.
However, because the mainwater network is a nationally important infrastructure, it is extremely difficult to prove the impact of new technologies that could work from internal pipes (e.g. sensors that provide more live, open data from streams). Water quality cannot be at risk by trying out innovations that have not been proven through live networks.
We need new technologies that help reduce network leaks, but if we can’t test them in a live environment, how do we prove they work? NLRTC allows for this dynamic testing, allowing rigorous testing and proof of technology in “real world” conditions, and then confidently develop and deploy across the country.
Like streams, it is an example of innovation that drives the success of further innovation.
From one-third of industrial emissions to zero net
There is a lot of attention paid to sewage overflows and leaks, but there are important environmental issues that many people are not connected to the water sector. Greenhouse gas emissions.
Today, the sector emits about a third of UK industrial emissions and consumes 3% of the electricity produced in the UK. In response, we are working to achieve Net Zero: Severn Trent Water – In collaboration with nine other water companies and partners, including Siemens, Atkinsrealis and Aston University, we launched Net Zero Hub to make this commitment a reality.
The hub is a wastewater treatment plant that has been modified with technology to help meet Net Zero’s ambitions. In line with the spirit of the Ofwat Innovation Fund, Severn Trent Water is committed to sharing what it has learned with others in order to collaborate and tackle the UK’s water sector fight to limit emissions.
So far, this hub has demonstrated the effectiveness of various solutions. Nitrous oxide emissions were limited thanks to a solution called Actilayer, an activated sludge processing tank cover that converts nitrous oxide into harmless nitrogen and oxygen gas.
We also conducted successful tests to recover cellulose from sewage. This can be used as a valuable building material. This is a good step towards creating a circular economy for wastewater management. Rather than using whole new materials to build a new home, cellulose can be repackaged from waste to valuable and usable assets.
Like the previous two examples, this is an innovation that lays the foundation for even more births. With infrastructure in place, the real world is the opportunity to test other innovations that benefit sectors beyond water.
The energy sector will be the most obvious beneficiary of such innovations. And the hub could play a key role as net zero ambitions remain essential to ensure cleaner futures and slower the rate of global warming and subsequent climate change.
Innovation that leads to innovation
There is a proverb that says, “The rising tide lifts all boats.” The key to success is pursuing a joint and united effort to support each other and address sustainable issues.
In fact, none of these examples are isolated. They are all part of the web that did not exist before the launch of the OFWAT Innovation Fund. Today, both NLRTC and Net Zero Hub are working with Stream to integrate open data sharing. NLRTC can enable testing of new technologies that provide data via streams. Innovations using Stream and NLRTC data can be proven on Net Zero Hub.
The key to the fund’s next five years is scaling solutions to drive real-world impact on customers, society and the environment.
Stream, NLRTC, and Net Zero Hub (all innovative projects in themselves) form the infrastructure that enables further innovation and new solutions to the many challenges facing the water sector.
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