This year the annual benchmarking workshop of the EBC-programme took place on November 15-17 in the beautiful city of Porto, Portugal. Over 80 representatives from participating utilities attended the event.
The annual workshop is an important part of EBC’s benchmarking programme for water services, which covers both performance assessment- and performance improvement activities. First goal of the workshop is to discuss findings from the performance assessment that was carried out in the previous months, showing comparisons between utilities of comparable size, trends in performance, performance gaps and best performers in the different areas of analysis. A second, essential goal of the workshop is to exchange good practices and innovations to learn from and to get inspired for improvement actions in the own utility.
In the 2023 workshop, which was jointly organised with Águas e Energia do Porto and took place in the Porto Business School, participants discussed topics in the areas of EU Requirements (including Sustainability Reporting) & Funding Opportunities, Climate Action, Asset Management, Resilience & Risk Assessment, Innovations, the ‘Digital Utility’, Utility Management, Finance & Efficiency, as these are of urgent importance. Utilities shared concrete experiences with climate resilience, N2O-reduction, improving energy efficiency, NRW-reduction, AI recognition of sewer network defects & reduction of exfiltration, preparing to water supply security & cybersecurity threats, double materiality assessment, R&D projects & innovations, and much more in breakout sessions, which were introduced by enthusiastic practitioners.
Also, since the CSRD is one of the relevant topics in the next years for the programme participants, Pedro Faria (Environmental Lead, EFRAG) told the participants in the plenary part about EFRAG, key features of the CSR Directive, double materiality assessment, the sector agnostic standards and development of sector specific ESRS.
On the second day, Marco Beros from EIB told about the need for resilience indicators and about EU Investment. Bartosz Luszczek updated the group on the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive and in the afternoon participants had the opportunity to visit the drinking water treatment plant ETA de Lever of Águas do Douro e Paiva (AdDP), which delivers water to about 1,5 million inhabitants.
The lively interactions and friendly atmosphere in the sessions and during the breaks and meals showed that in-person contacts definitively contribute to building a strong network of utilities and their staff, committed to improve water services. Therefore, we are convinced that the workshop is an essential element of the benchmarking programme and an effective place for networking, exchanging experiences and further improvement of the companies’ performance and strategic development.
The organisers look back at a very successful workshop. Also, on behalf of the participants, EBC would like to thank Águas e Energia do Porto sincerely for its excellent organisation and warm hospitality!