Intesa Sanpaolo and ACEA have signed the first national agreement for the protection and sustainable management of water in company production processes, also in relation to the measures of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP), which allocates approximately €4.4 billion to protect water resources. The first Italian bank and the first national water operator aim to develop new systemic initiatives with innovative solutions to encourage the efficient use of water resources through technological advisory services, along with investments for the reuse of purified water within “water communities”, with positive impacts on the environment, the local areas and the companies themselves, which will be able to stabilise their water supply.
To this end, Intesa Sanpaolo will make available €20 billion to support the initiatives of companies and operators in the water supply chain, as part of the broader available financing of €410 billion announced by CEO Carlo Messina for new loans to support NRRP initiatives.
The agreement was presented today in Rome in the presence of Fabrizio Palermo, CEO of ACEA, Stefano Barrese, Chief of Intesa Sanpaolo's Banca dei Territori Division and Mauro Micillo, Chief of Intesa Sanpaolo's IMI Corporate & Investment Banking Division. In addition, Laura Campanini, Head of Local Public Finance Research Department Intesa Sanpaolo and Alessandro Leto, senior advisor of ACEA, presented the joint study “The opportunity of reusing purified wastewater”, while Marco Pastorello, Head of ACEA's CEO Office, described the general principles of this collaboration aimed at encouraging virtuous behaviour in terms of sustainability.The closing speech was delivered by Emanuele Orsini, President of Confindustria, who emphasised the importance of choosing to use water responsibly for business system competitiveness.
Thanks to the agreement, Intesa Sanpaolo and ACEA will each work with their own expertise and resources to achieve the following objectives:
- Offering dedicated services and products to support investments, such as the S-Loan Green Projects financial solution to enhance the transformation of the water resource management model: creation of sustainable infrastructure for the production of clean or potable water, incentivising the construction and modernisation of wastewater treatment facilities, interventions to handle events caused by climate change through river water drainage systems and other forms of flood mitigation;
- Access to advisory services for companies interested in infrastructural interventions, facilitating the dissemination and adoption of technologies aimed at exploiting the water resources to be made available to companies, particularly those operating in the agricultural and industrial sectors.
- Through Intesa Sanpaolo's Supply Chain Development Programme, support will be offered to sustainable management projects for the entire water supply chain. Strategic players, priorities and needs will be mapped in order to effectively support investments, innovation projects and economic-financial profile improvement;
- Thanks to the free “Incent Now” platform, it will be easier for companies to access European and national calls for tenders, especially those related to the NRRP;
- Collaboration in the area of research and training to disseminate a culture of sustainable water use through structured dissemination and information activities with the publication of an Observatory on the water sector;
- Supporting the development of adequate professionals by promoting the development of expertise in the “water economy”;
- Encouraging water recovery through the promotion of “water communities”, ensuring increasingly efficient water reuse and developing a local distribution network to supply purified water to nearby agricultural and industrial districts, with the adaptation of production facilities to ensure the full and proper utilisation of treated water resources.
The first issue of the ACEA and Intesa Sanpaolo Water Sector Observatory, presented today, is dedicated to the topic of reusing purified wastewater, a practice that could contribute significantly to reducing water stress. The Report analyses the current situation and the constraints on its wider dissemination. Subsequent issues of the Observatory will analyse the other major infrastructural, regulatory and cultural “knots” delaying the achievement of the level of Water Security that the country needs.
