Researchers have released results from testing a new European sewage plant energy audit method at 15 locations in Italy. The work was undertaken as part of the ENERWATER research project, which aims ultimately to support the creation of European legislation on wastewater plant energy efficiency.

Energy audits provide a way to assess the performance of wastewater treatment plants and to identify those where there is an opportunity to reduce energy use. Wastewater treatment is provided by many different process combinations. This means it is difficult to make comparisons between plants regarding their energy efficiency.

A preliminary energy audit methodology has been developed by the ENERWATER project, which is funded by the EU Horizon 2020 programme. According to the researchers, the project aims to validate and disseminate an innovative standard methodology for continuously assessing, labelling and improving the overall performance of wastewater treatment plants, and has created a collaborative framework to progress this, bringing together research groups, utilities, municipalities, water authorities and industry. The method has been tested at 50 wastewater treatment plants in Italy, Spain and Germany. The Italian results are from the 15 Italian plants in those 50.

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