Life SVOLTA BLU - Sistema VOLontario di crediTi per promuovere il risparmio e la conservazione dell'Acqua

Introduction

Life SVOLTA BLU project stems from the challenge of finding a balance between the need for sufficient and high-quality water for human health, economic activities, and nature in the context of climate change. To this end, the proposed project will develop and test an innovative approach that has the ambitious goal to increase the interest and awareness of businesses and citizens about water topics, and to make available larger financial resources for effective water management actions, in synergy with the EU strategy for sustainable finance and related initiatives.

Project Goals

Taking the carbon credit market as a reference, the project intends to replicate it in the water sector, designing and activating a water credit trading system (blue credits) in which:

1. Demand: Those who use water and want to reduce their water footprint.
2. Supply: Those who invest in saving, protection, and valorising actions according to criteria of equity, transparency, and affordability.

The overall objective of the project is to verify the feasibility, validity, and sustainability of such a management architecture, laying the foundations for its effective implementation and dissemination in the post-LIFE phase.

Involvement and Funding

More than 30 organisations, including private companies, primary sector operators, and municipalities, will be directly involved in the testing phase of the proposed system. The project aims to mobilise and use about €500,000 of external funding for effective water savings initiatives during the project course, resulting in an expected savings of 200,000 m³/year of water usage. Both values are expected to increase tenfold in the post-LIFE phase when the system will be widely open.

Additional Outcomes

In addition, the project will:

• Issue 40 water footprint certificates.
• Train more than 120 public and private bodies on water savings, NWRM, sustainable finance, and ESG ratings.
• Ensure the after-LIFE sustainability of the proposed system in the Vicenza territory.
• Develop and sign 3 Replication Plans with other territories.