On 11 and 12 September 2018 the partners in the EU Horizon 2020 project “NextGen – Towards a Next Generation of Water Systems and Services for the Circular Economy” met for the kick-off meeting. From Bath, Prof Jan Hofman, Dr Ana Lanham and Dr Alistair Hunt attended the meeting.
The project is a collaboration of 30 partners from Europe and 3 associated partners from Korea, India and China. KWR Watercycle Research Institute from the Netherlands leads the consortium. The project focusses on demonstrating circular economy concepts for water, energy and materials. Ten full-scale demonstrator case studies in eight European countries will form the heart of the project. The case studies will be evaluated in technical and economic sense and assessed for their environmental impact. But the project goes beyond technical studies. It will also engage with stakeholders and end-users to discover the enabling factors for circular economy. For this purpose, serious games will be developed. Also, policy hurdles will be investigated, and a market place will be created for industry to find the right solutions to enable circular economy principles in water, energy and materials management. The main goal is to create viable supply chains for water, energy and materials from water treatment.
WIRC (Water Innovation & Research Centre)@Bath contributes to the technical assessments of the 10 case studies, with focus on the energy theme, but will also contribute to water and materials. We will collaborate closely with YTL Developments on one of the case studies Filton Airfield, South Gloucestershire. IPR will lead the task on policy evaluations.
For more information: Jan Hofman
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