Agenda

Anna Delgado, Water Specialist at the World Bank, is the Author of the Water in Circular Economy and Resilience report. Her report aims to promote a common understanding on the definition and applications of circular economy principles and resilience in the urban water sector. Anna Delgado will introduce different challenges and opportunities and will therefore, set the focus of the event.

During this session, we will go into detail on the three different focus areas of this years BLUE PLANET Berlin Water Dialogues. At first, Dr. Anne Kleyböcker from the Centre for Competence on Water Berlin will speak about Water smart industrial symbioses: recovering and reusing resources from industrial wastewater in her presentation on outcomes of the ULTIMATE project.

The title of Christian Kabbe’s presentation will be Nutrient recycling – Quality matters! Volume matters! Reliability matters! – for Circular Economy, where he will focus on nutrient recovery from wastewater. In specific, we will learn how EasyMining Germany, a joint Venture from the Gelsenwasser AG and EasyMining Services Sweden AB, is recovering high quality phosphorus from sewage sludge ash.

In the focus area Water-Energy-Nexus we will have a combined presentation by Timo Paul from Vattenfall and Heinrich Gürtler from the Berliner Wasserbetriebe on the Potential of Wastewater Heat as a Carbon Neutral Source - Benefits of Sector Coupling. Together, they will present a pilot project in which a large scale wastewater heat pump will fuel the Berlin district heating system with carbon neutral thermal energy.

Daniela Bemfica is Director of Strategic Programmes and Engagement at IWA, where she leads the programmes on Water and Sanitation Services and Cities of the Future. The IWA Programmes establish change agendas on key topics for a water-wise world that contribute to sustainable development. In her Keynote, we will learn about the wide range of IWA’s initiatives, events and publications and how they boost Circular Water Economy as a globally active association.

Dr. Christian Remy, Group Leader Energy & Resources, Environmental Engineer at KWB, is focusing his research on the Life Cycle Assessment of wastewater treatment schemes in Projects like Carbon is Money: From Wastewater to Energy (CARISMO) or Creating Synergies Between Municipal Solid Waste and Wastewater Management (REEF 2W). He will be moderator for the panel on Economic Viability & Sustainability in Circular Economy. We will discuss experiences and results of long-term Circular Economy measures in the Water Industry and which adjustments had to be implemented to sustain the economic viability. Speakers In the discussion will be representatives of the industry, utilities and institutes, amongst others Christoph Blöcher, Head of Infrastructure Processes, Materials & Corrosion at Covestro and Olaf van der Kolk, Managing Director at AquaMinerals B.V.

Phoebe Koundouri is Professor in Economics and Director of ReSEES Laboratory at the School of Economics of the Athens University of Economics and Business and Director of the Sustainable Development Research Unit at ATHENA Information Technology Research Center. She holds a MPhil and a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge and is recognized as a pioneer in innovative, human-centric, interdisciplinary systems for the sustainable interaction between nature, society, and the economy. Based on her work in the project Water-Futures, she will share an outlook on how the water infrastructure in cities of the future will look like. Crisis and increasingly uncertain climate conditions have increased the need for a more holistic and intelligent decision-making in the management of water infrastructures, how can these systems become more socially equitable, economically efficient and environmentally resilient?