F&S: Slowdown Boosts Sustainable Technology Market
The global economic slowdown has created huge opportunities for sustainable water and wastewater treatment technologies. These opportunities can be found in key areas such as energy efficiency, waste reduction, resource recovery as well as water reuse and recycling.
“Sustainable water and wastewater treatment technologies and services are proving to be the ‘green’ shoots of strong growth for the global water market in 2009”, says Frost & Sullivan Research Manager Fredrick Harry Royan. “These technologies have benefited hugely by the fact that the global financial meltdown has led to the drying up of the funding pipeline for large water and wastewater treatment infrastructure projects. As a result, sustainable water and wastewater treatment technologies with strong green credentials are increasingly finding favor on account of key tangible benefits:
- higher levels of energy and treatment efficiency,
- sensitive ecological habitat and wildlife protection,
- renewable energy generation and/or
- carbon footprint reduction."
Sustainable solutions span from energy and resource recovery from desalination plants to biogas generation from wastewater treatment, water reuse and recycling systems market as well as chemical free water and wastewater treatment.
Some challenges, however, may slow the market expansion. First of all, costs. “The price of some sustainable solutions is still beyond the reach of a large section of the market”, confirms Royan. “Financing of large sustainable projects is one of the main issues that need to be considered.”
Strategic alliances and partnerships will be crucial in tailoring and delivering effective sustainable solutions in the emerging markets. Furthermore, affordability as well as financing of sustainable solutions and projects will be the key to meeting the Millennium Development Goals of access to safe drinking water and sanitation. At the same time, the Millennium Development Goals related to sanitation will be the key driver of investment in developing countries and will provide opportunities particularly for relatively low cost sustainable solutions such as the upflow anaerobic sludge blanket systems.
For more information, contact Chiara Carella, Frost & Sullivan Corporate Communications, at chiara.carella@frost.com.