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?

Water scarcity, energy costs and climate pressure are converging at exactly the moment utilities have the technology and the policy backing to stop treating wastewater as a cost and start treating it as a resource. In Morocco and across the MENA region this shift isn’t optional, it’s existential — reuse, nutrient recovery and energy self-sufficiency are becoming core to how we plan water infrastructure, not side projects. The sector has talked about the circular bioeconomy for years; now the regulatory, financial and technical pieces are actually lining up to make it real.

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

For us, it’s nutrient recovery, particularly phosphorus, given Morocco’s position in the global phosphate industry — there’s a natural link between biosolids, agriculture and fertiliser production that few countries are positioned to exploit the way we are. More broadly, I’d say the biggest opportunity is turning wastewater infrastructure into a genuine revenue and resilience asset: reclaimed water for irrigation, biogas for energy, and recovered nutrients for agriculture, all from streams utilities used to just dispose of.

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

I’m looking to meet utilities and innovative compagnies further along the resource-recovery curve than we are, so we can learn from what’s already been scaled rather than reinvent it. I’m also keen to talk to technology providers and investors who can help de-risk moving our R&D pilots into full deployment, and to policymakers wrestling with the same regulatory questions we face around biosolids and water reuse.