Speaker Insights

Ahead of the WEX Global Bioeconomy Summit, we asked our speakers to share their perspectives on the opportunities, challenges and innovations shaping the global bioeconomy.

1. Why is now such an important moment for the water and bioeconomy sectors?

As a representative of the urban water sector, I would focus on the implementation in the European Union of the new Directive (EU) 2024/3019 concerning urban wastewater treatment. As an example, reducing and optimizing energy consumption or the reuse or recycling of urban wastewater or sludge to recover phosphorous, are now a must in this new regulation. Thus, this is the right time for these sectors, since there is a huge potential of opportunities involved in order to achieve these mandatory goals.

2. What is the biggest opportunity in wastewater and resource recovery?

As mentioned before, the urban wastewater treatment sector offers the opportunity (and now the obligation) to improve the energy efficiency of the processes involved, reducing its own consumption and extracting all the energy available in the wastewater to increase the production of renewable energy (biogas, solar, kinetic, etc). As for the resource recovery we now can better align sludge management with the principles of circular economy, aiming to a safe use of the sludge in agriculture. To achieve the proper recovery of nutrients (phosphorus, nitrogen) from sludge, a mixture of reuse and recycle are set in place.

3. Who are you hoping to connect with at the WEX Global Bioeconomy Summit?

I hope to connect with colleagues from other territories in Europe and from other countries in the world, from the public and private urban water sectors. I am very interested to see how these issues are being addressed in other countries, which are the main concerns, the main difficulties and also find potential interests and synergies.