The demand for water will continue to rise considerably, however, at the same time the availability of freshwater resources is diminishing owing to contamination, sinking groundwater level, dried up wells and the climate change. In the USA during the last 30 years water consumption has tripled, whereas the population has only grown by 50 %. Global water consumption doubles every 20 years, more than double as quick as the growth of population. According to current trends one third of the population is said to have no access to clean drinking water until the year of 2025.
The global world market is estimated by Goldman Sachs (2008) at about 425 billion USD with a long-term growth of 4-6 %. In industrial markets an average growth of 3-5 % (USA and Western Europe) is expected through an improvement in existing water and waste water infrastructure within a period of 5-10 years and in developing markets of 10 % and more (China and India) through building a new water and waste water infrastructure.
Owing to the substantial supply and demand imbalance, the strongest growing areas on the global water market will be found at high-standard water treatment technologies:
- Filtration/ultra-filtration–improvements in these areas can replace the use of chemicals in water treatment
- Reverse osmosis (membrane technology)
- Desalination (drinking water from sea water)
- UV- and ozone disinfection systems – are a cost-efficient alternative to water disinfection by means of chlorine
- Water tests