Access to clean water and reliable affordable energy remains a critical development challenge, particularly in rural areas and informal settlements around the world. Conventional centralised infrastructures often struggle to reach remote or poorly developed areas due to high costs, logistics and accessibility barriers. Against this backdrop, decentralised water-energy (WE) solutions, such as solar-powered water treatment and hybrid microgrids, are emerging as viable, scalable, and sustainable alternatives. These integrated systems allow to address water and energy scarcity and can offer broader socio-economic and environmental benefits, including improved public health, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and increased resilience to climate change.
This session brings together practitioners, policymakers, and researchers to share knowledge, examine real-world experiences, and identify best practices for deploying decentralised WE solutions. We will focus on the outcomes and the best practices of decentralised, sustainable water and energy solutions funded by the Flemish International Climate Action Programme (VIKAP), but we will also consider other initiatives. We will explore how technology providers can improve the sustainability of communities that are either off-grid or that face unreliable on-grid water and energy services. Participants will gain key insights into the effectiveness of decentralised WE systems, along with best practices to guide the development and scaling up of future projects.
Dores Cirne
Rouba Onaissi
Laurenz Devers
