Insights

What might we gain from losing Nalco?

There is a certain logic to Ecolab’s $8.1 billion bid for Nalco. Both companies started selling chemicals in the 1920s but have since built out a service offering based on managing the use of chemicals in the workplace. Nalco started with water treatment chemicals for boilers, and for conditioning drilling mud in the oil and gas industry. Today ...

Water’s role in the protein crunch

Until last year, the water-energy nexus was a big enough concern on its own. Over the past twelve months, the challenge of feeding the world’s seven billion people has been added to the mix. The essential challenge is as follows: if we want to increase energy production, we might need to use biofuels, which use a lot of water ...

Desalters: no need to take your spades to China

Four years ago we ran a story about the official strategy for the desalination industry in China. It was entitled: ‘dig your own grave’. Foreign firms were invited to come to China, show the local companies how to do it, then surrender both the Chinese market and the global market to the Chinese competition.

I have been in Qingdao this ...

Should we blame China for Italy’s water privatisation?

I was in Sicily last week, and couldn’t help noticing a few bedraggled posters relating to the national referendum on water services being held this coming Sunday and Monday. Last year, opponents of private water put together 1.4 million signatures demanding a vote on striking out a law which would require cost recovery pricing across the Italian water ...

Why don’t Australians believe in their own water sector?

Blue Sky Water’s recent tour of Australia’s major cities to drum up interest for a new water rights fund recalls a similar effort made by Causeway Water less than a year ago. Although Causeway has still to announce the results of its fundraising round, this could be the year that domestic investors finally make an impact in the ...

The future is temporary

In ten years’ time, will we still be building water infrastructure for 100 years? I started to wonder about this after seeing the Chart of the Month in the May issue of GWI. It suggests that demand forecasting in the water sector is stupidly inaccurate. Models are constructed on the basis of projected population growth and industrial expansion, only to ...