Global water technology leader, Xylem announced it is sponsoring an innovative new funding mechanism for water utilities to deploy promising new technologies. The partnership with water consultancy Isle Utilities is a new approach to funding and scaling breakthrough water technologies, called the “Trial Reservoir.” It provides water technology innovators access to capital for pilot projects, with an initial focus on technologies that reduce the carbon emissions of water systems. Technology trials and pilots are generally required in advance of full-scale implementations.
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The Trial Reservoir will make a pool of funding available to early-stage technology companies, giving them the capacity to undertake trial deployments with water utilities. The ‘reservoir’ of funding will be replenished from the proceeds of commercial contracts, when the trials move to full deployments. Xylem is a foundation sponsor of the initiative along with other leading water sector partners.
“Innovation and new approaches to water management will be essential for cities and communities to solve their increasing water challenges and decrease their carbon footprint,” said Sivan Zamir, head of Xylem Innovation Labs. “This fund will help lower one of the biggest barriers to deploying and scaling breakthrough innovations: the question of who pays for the trial. The fund, itself, is an important innovation. It’s a new approach to financing that lowers the economic risk of trying new technologies that can solve communities’ water challenges.”
“Xylem’s sponsorship of the Trial Reservoir does much more than just create financial capacity for innovation in water utilities,” said Dr Piers Clark, Chairman of the Isle Group. “The Trial Reservoir brings together all the players needed to bring new technologies to market – utilities, investors, start-ups, non-profits. By removing financial uncertainty, partnerships between utilities and innovators can focus on solving a community’s water challenges and getting new water technologies proven in the marketplace.”
The Trial Reservoir is open to technology vendors around the world, actively supporting trials in high, medium and low-income countries. The only requirement is that the technology being tested must help reduce the carbon footprint of the water system, be that a municipal utility or an industrial/commercial water user.
The Trial Reservoir expects to fund its first utility pilots in the first quarter of 2022.
About Xylem
Xylem (XYL) is a leading global water technology company committed to solving critical water and infrastructure challenges with innovation. Our more than 16,000 diverse employees delivered revenue of $4.88 billion in 2020. We are creating a more sustainable world by enabling our customers to optimize water and resource management, and helping communities in more than 150 countries become water-secure. Join us at www.xylem.com.
About Isle Utilities
Isle is an independent specialist technical consultancy focussed on the water sector. We are a 95-person business with offices spread around the world (USA, Australia, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Netherlands, UK). One of our core offerings it to help water utilities/municipalities identify, screen and adopt new and novel technologies. We have been doing this for over 10 years and currently work with over 300 utilities on a long-term retained basis. We do this through a forum called Technology Approval Group (TAG). We have reviewed over 8,000 technologies and facilitated the investment of over $1bn into new technologies