Dirty water means cleantech opportunities
In his Cleantech Investing blog, Rob Day points to a Frost & Sulliven report projecting that the microfiltration membrane market will grow to about $1.3 billion (U.S.) in 2011 from $792 million last year. He also makes reference to a Reuters news alert talking about China and the likelihood that the country’s water crisis will peak in 2030 when its population hits 1.6 billion people.
Some excerpts:
China had 21 per cent of the global population and only 7 per cent of the world’s total water resources… Measured against its economy, China consumed five times more water than the global average.
Over-exploration of groundwater, heavy pollution and widespread waste are taking a heavy toll on the country’s limited liquid assets.
Domestic industries and residents discharged 200 billion tonnes of untreated waste water into rivers every year and 90 per cent of rivers that passed through Chinese cities were polluted.
Of course, the water crisis — in China or elsewhere — is a horrible situation, but like any environmental problem it creates opportunities for cleantech. Oakville, Ont.-based Zenon Technologies, for example, is one of the globe’s leading membrane filtration companies. It already has China on its radar and, if it plays its cards right, could become a major provider of water filtration systems in the region.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca