Insights

Can water continue to outperform? Ask Veolia

Sometimes the stock market rises because investors anticipate growth. Sometimes it rises simply because the money has nowhere else to go. The latter explanation seems to fit the mood of the market today. What does it mean for water?

There are two main reasons why money has been running out of options of late. The first is because the anticipation ...

Tex-Nex on the menu as growth drives water and power demand

The water-energy nexus is coming to Texas. 30 months of drought have collided with an oil-driven economic boom, and money will need to be spent on water as a result.

It started with the shale: first gas, then oil. The economy – and the population – started to grow faster. As North American energy independence drew closer, Texans started to talk about ...

Is misusing and mismanaging water a human right?

Suddenly the human right to water is back in the news, thanks to a European Citizens’ Initiative to establish the right in European law. To many readers, it probably seems a bit irrelevant. The UN accepted the right to water nearly three years ago and it didn’t change much on the ground, so why should anyone care when the ...

Ten things I learned in Seville

1) The water business is getting more global
Delegate numbers at the event were 22% above last year’s Global Water Summit. That says to me that the market is becoming global at a faster rate than it is actually growing.

2) Latin America is the new Middle East
At each of our six previous conferences, the region of the ...

Which water technologies would you kill to own?

There is a slightly unnerving story in this month’s GWI about how Israel’s new water technology sector has grown faster than investor interest in it. It seems that around 130 start-ups have been looking for money but local investors think that they can get better returns elsewhere.

Our data suggests that globally, investment in water technology start ups ...

Dump Veolia: a nasty reminder of 21st century sales

Last week Veolia took a hit from the left field in St. Louis. It had won a competitive tender at the end of last year for a $250,000, four-month consulting contract which should have been the prelude to a longer-term performance-based contract with the utility. Then after a campaign by local Palestinian activists, they were told that the deal ...