During 2024 we carried out an intense activity to increase the visibility of AEDyR, on the one hand, and to improve our positioning with public institutions and other organisations, as well as with the sector itself, on the other.
An example of the former is the increase in our presence in the economic and general media, as well as in specialised media, making us a reference source of information for all.
And an example of the second is the key meetings we held with the Secretary of State for Agriculture, the Director General for Water and other political representatives, including meetings with Salvador Illa, the Partido Popular, the think tank OIKOS, CEOE and Cepyme. To all of them we presented and explained our proposals to optimise water management in Spain.
On the other hand, we actively worked to strengthen the water sector and ensure a solid regulatory framework that provides certainty to companies and streamlines the contracting of water projects. A key example was the contributions to the Water Reuse Regulation (approved in October) that we sent to the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge. This document included proposals on mapping information on irrigable areas, irrigation management, quality of reclaimed water and analytical controls, among other aspects.
Throughout the year, we strengthened our knowledge dissemination and collaboration with key entities. We participated in the Green Hydrogen Congress, highlighting the role of desalination in the production of sustainable energy, and in the digital seminar ‘Facing the challenges of water scarcity in Europe’ together with Water Europe. And the technical conferences we organise every year focus on something increasingly important, the Water-Energy Nexus. We bring together representatives from the water and energy sectors to analyse their synergies.
We also organised the Water Observatory, a forum to highlight the importance of desalination and reuse for agricultural sustainability and the need for investment in water infrastructures.
In addition, with the educational objective of dispelling false myths about desalination, we prepared a decalogue with real data on its cost, energy consumption, environmental impact and relevance for the sector, among other issues.
Julen Cabero García
