The European Parliament has assigned ESINs vice president Christian Pleijel to examine how much water eight European islands use, who uses it, what it is used for, where it comes from, what it costs and if it is possible to svae some of this water. The project is run in cooperation with ESIN, the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Hellenic Small Islands Network, CRES in Greece and AIP in France.

In the first phase, field studies were made on all the islands. In a second phase, mayors and water managers from these islands gathered for a three-day workshop on the island of Vis. The challenge was to see if it’s possible to save 25% of the water the island uses.

The answer was both yes and no. They concluded that it is possible to save between 10 and 55%, depending on the island’s situation. In total, this would save 178 million small water per year, which also means 470,000 less kWh, reduced costs of 266,000 euros and reduced CO2 emissions by 42 tonnes.

The project is likely to be part of the DG energy’s major energy initiative on islands, which is supposed to decarbonise 1,000 islands by 2030.

Today, in competition with many other water projects, we were awarded the 2017 prize by the global “Greening the Islands” environmental organization during their annual conference on the island of Favignana, outside of Sicily.

– “We are fighting water waste”, said Pleijel at the ceremony. “Simply put: We produce more water then we need, and we don’t need as much water as we use.”