Sustainability Salon: Water

Water supply and management have a significant impact on energy consumption, resilience, and environmental diversity and quality. In southern England, where water infrastructure is privately owned, its exploitation produces extensive pollution at great expense, while generating profit. By contrast, Scotland’s publicly owned water infrastructure appears more resilient and less costly, funded through council taxes based on council bands rather than usage (unless specifically requested).

Still, we need to identify potential issues that may arise from the implementation of Scotland’s Climate Change Plan, new water demand from hydrogen production and hyperscale data centres, and the need to maintain and improve infrastructure, particularly for rural areas, so that scientists and industry can help strengthen our offering. Our efforts to serve society, in turn, must be balanced by our responsibility to reduce the impact on our environment and wildlife.

We invite consumers, providers, and managers of our water capital to join this Sustainability Salon and:

• discuss the different demands and responsibilities;
• identify the obstacles and potential solutions for the coming decades as the landscape changes;
• set challenges and targets we can strive for to ensure our actions keep Scotland and the UK at the forefront of water safety and abundance – preventing water from becoming a serious limiter to our economic growth, while maintaining the incredible waterways and wildlife dependent on our wonderfully wet climate.

Organised by Knowledge Exchange Associate David Hughes, the Sustainability Salons bring together the practical knowledge of industry and the technical and theoretical expertise of academics, to inspire projects that will help solve sustainability issues. We have EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA) funding available to support these projects.

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Host or Publisher University of Glasgow - College of Science & Engineering