Water BOOST Enabling Innovation for Future Ready Cities 2025

Barcelona’s water innovation ecosystem is shaped by persistent water scarcity, strong governance leadership and significant investment in adaptive infrastructure. With increasing pressure from climate change, population growth and tourism, drought resilience has become a central policy priority across Catalonia.42 This context has enabled a long-term focus on water reuse, circularity and cross-sector collaboration. At the governance level, Barcelona exhibits a strong enabling environment. Regional public institutions – including the Catalan Water Agency (ACA), the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) and municipal actors such as Barcelona Water Cycle Company (BCASA) – have spearheaded innovative infrastructure initiatives such as the El Prat water reclamation facility, which recharges the Llobregat River aquifer upstream, and various district-level grey-water reuse schemes. In El Prat de Llobregat, a distinctive dual water system is operated by Aigües del Prat, supplying reclaimed water for non-potable uses. These public stakeholders, in close collaboration with Agbar – the city’s private concession owned by Veolia – operate within a shared strategic vision and with robust permitting frameworks (E1) that support experimentation and innovation. Innovators such as Greytank, Caskade and MICA are advancing decentralized and resource-efficient solutions as well as supporting circular economy models. However, most incentives and micro- funding streams originate from public actors such as the Barcelona City Council and the Government of Catalonia – creating a support base that attracts early-stage ventures but often lacks the investment depth required for scale-up. Private-sector investors and accelerators remain scarce, and early growth- stage capital is limited (E3). While programmes such as BitHabitat and Barcelona Regional play a key role in seeding innovation, the absence of sustained co-investment weakens the transition from pilot to market.3.5 Barcelona Water-BOOST diagram for Barcelona FIGURE 12 Disclaimer note: The stakeholder gr oups and organizations listed in this diagram r epresent a sample of those engaged in this r esear ch. Their inclusion does not imply exclusivity , nor does it suggest that other actors within these gr oups ar e less r elevant or less active. Categorization is indicative and should not be interpr eted as fixed.Barcelona Water Cycle Company (BCASA) + Aigües del Prat + AgbarG1 Catalan Water Agency (ACA) + Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) + Barcelona City Council (Barcelona Regional)G2 Dinapsis (Cetaqua and Labaqua) + Greytank + Caskade + MICAA1 Barcelona City Council (BitHabitat) + Gover nment of Catalonia A2 Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) + Institute of Envir onmental Science and Technology (ICTA- UAB) + Open University of Catalonia (UOC) + Catalan Institute for Water Resear ch (ICRA)S1 Catalan Water Partnership (CWP) S2A2G2SE2 E3 E2G1 E5 A1A1 SE1S1 S2E1 SE3E4 Weak enabler Source: World Economic Forum Water-BOOST: Enabling Innovation for Future-Ready Cities 30