December 14, 2022
climate-change collaboration innovation innovation-in-water-challenge IWC winnersWith the UK-hosted G7 summit having taken place in June, London Climate Action Week taking place next week and the UN Climate Change Conference set to take place in November this year, responding to and adapting to climate change has never been more in focus. And with the water sector in England and Wales in a race to become the first sector to be net-zero by 2030 – and warnings the UK is struggling to keep pace with climate change impacts – the need for innovation has never been more pressing.
If you have an idea to tackle climate change or help people adapt to changes in the climate, the Ofwat Innovation Fund can help you make your #WaterBrightIdea our #WaterFuture. Details of the next competitions which we’ll be running in the autumn will be available at the end of the summer.
In the meantime, here are some sources of inspiration from two of our previous winners – including the importance of forming partnerships early. So if you have a great idea, why not find your water company innovation partner today
The water industry is facing a significant supply-demand deficit due to population growth, climate change and the need to balance customers’ need for water with the ecological impact on rivers. In response to these challenges, the water industry is striving for better sustainability and to reduce, and ultimately eliminate, leakage from the water supply network.
Leakage from the network can also result in the catastrophic failure of pipes, causing severe disruption to customer supply and endangering public safety through the flooding and the downstream loss of water for essential activities – including the loss of mains water for use by the fire service.
The project will investigate the use of unused optical fibre strands (“dark fibre”) within the existing cable networks for leak detection in water and wastewater networks and develop leakage detection as a service business model. The service will provide data not currently available from existing leak detection techniques by monitoring large areas of the network, 24/7. Additionally, they will provide information on ground stability (e.g. the detection of voids developing around a leak) and activity on network assets (e.g. the operation of valves and hydrants).
Fibre leak detection is an emerging technique that has shown great potential for use in the water industry. The proposed technique uses a laser to detect noise at intervals along an optical fibre and has been successfully demonstrated in the rail sector. This project will develop and enhance the technique for transfer into the water industry.
A proof of concept for the use of dark fibre for leak detection will be developed and a novel ‘leakage detection’ as a service business model will be created, enabling water companies to quickly adopt this as the optimum solution as an alternative, or in addition to, traditional leak detection techniques. This will also be applicable globally at locations that have fibre infrastructure near water networks.
Hafren Dyfrdwy partnered with Focus Sensing and Costain after having been introduced at a brokerage event. They recognised their technology as having great potential and benefits for the water industry. Hafren Dyfrdwy would encourage others looking to get involved in the Innovation Fund competitions to start developing project proposals as early as possible. Working collaboratively with the project partners enables them to pressure test and continuously improve their project plan and business case to ensure it is achievable and will deliver maximum benefit to customers, society and the environment.
The world faces both a climate emergency and nature crisis, battling pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss. As we enter the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, nature-based solutions have become recognised as key to addressing both challenges.
The Seagrass Seeds of Recovery project will provide a blueprint for restoring seagrass in the UK, creating opportunities to improve biodiversity and reduce carbon and nitrogen. Seagrass meadows enhance the stability of the coastal zone, locking carbon into the seabed, improving water quality, and creating a habitat for small animals, which enhances the resilience of coastal ecosystems. The project will provide a road map to unlock the ‘blue carbon’ potential (carbon captured by marine ecosystems) of seagrass restoration for the water industry and beyond.
Seagrass restoration is innovative in and of itself. In particular, the development of a seagrass nursery will be world-leading providing carbon offsets for “blue carbon” and create a seagrass habitat from dredge sediment. This has not been done in the UK before. Seagrass growth enhancement from process emissions will also be a world first.
Recent estimates suggest that seagrass loss in the UK may be as high as 92%. In the Essex and Suffolk areas thousands of hectares of seagrass have been lost. In the 1970s at least 380 hectares (≈380 football pitches) of seagrass could be found in the Stour and Orwell Estuaries which has all but disappeared today. These 380 hectares would have once supplied over £20 million pounds worth of denitrification and nitrogen burial services, stored over 41,000 tonnes of carbon, harboured 4.6x the abundance of fish, and increased the strength of coastal sediments by up to tenfold and substantially increasing coastal resilience during extreme weather events.
This project goes beyond simple restoration to create blue carbon frameworks to finance roll out at scale within the water industry and beyond. Carbon offsets for ‘blue carbon’ would be a new opportunity for the UK. Progress on policy to aid the development of a blue carbon finance framework (equivalent to the Woodland Code) would enable carbon credits to be issued, which would fund further restoration activities. There is presently huge demand for this with businesses and industries looking to move beyond tree planting. Investment in a blue carbon framework will help unlock this possibility for the water sector in the UK and internationally.
The project delivers an opportunity for the water industry to engage early with the UN Decade On Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030 and indeed the wider UN Sustainable Development Goals (linked to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development). It will be the first time the water industry has explicitly engaged with a United Nations Environment Programme global initiative and will be doing so with an official ‘Supporting Partner’ (Project Seagrass).
Looking outside the sector for solutions has helped the project team to work with a wider range of partners. They started developing the project idea and partnerships in advance of the competition opening and this really helped when it came time to write the proposal. In addition, the experience has supported development of the wider innovation culture and process at Affinity Water.
The Ofwat Innovation Fund has been established to help the water sector in England and Wales grow its capacity to innovate and meet the needs of customers, society, and the environment. It aims to achieve this by supporting ambitious water company initiatives that demonstrate bold new approaches to innovation.
The first round of the Innovation in Water Challenge supported projects that went beyond the sector’s business-as-usual innovation practices and aligned with one or more of Ofwat’s five strategic innovation themes. The themes are five areas that Ofwat has identified as challenges for the water sector to overcome and that would benefit from additional innovation.
