Scaling Bankable Water Reuse Projects through Stakeholder Mobilization and Cost Reduction

Water scarcity affects four billion people globally and is intensifying as climate change, urbanization, and industrial growth strain conventional supplies. Water reuse offers a technically proven, cost-competitive response, yet it remains marginal in most countries' supply portfolios. The barriers are not technological but institutional: fragmented regulation, weak demand signals, and perceived risk inflate costs and deter the private capital needed to scale.

This Capstone project supported the World Bank's 2030 Water Resources Group by identifying the conditions under which water reuse projects become bankable at scale. The team conducted 30+ expert interviews, developed 10 country case studies, and undertook a site visit to Singapore to learn from the NEWater program. The central finding was that cost is a symptom: engineering overdesign, high transmission costs, procurement inefficiencies, and financing gaps all stem from weak upstream conditions. Bankability therefore depends on engineering demand through industrial anchors and co-location, and on mobilizing the stakeholders who build three forms of trust: governments, regulators, and utilities for institutional trust; civil society and communicators for public trust; and DFIs, private developers, and off takers for commercial trust. Building on this diagnosis, the team recommended a phased pathway: creating upstream conditions of trust and engineered demand, de-risking a first cohort of projects through blended finance and long-term offtake agreements and allowing commercial finance to take over as risk perception falls. The team also proposed a country readiness framework and an outline for scaling reuse through government-led coalitions.

By aligning water security with economic opportunity and institutional reform, this project advanced an inclusive approach to scaling water reuse, providing actionable, cross-disciplinary insights to inform future investments across emerging markets and beyond.