Yesterday I ran excerpts from an interview with venture capitalist David Henderson, managing director of XPV Capital in Toronto, about why he sees water as a strategic investment. Today he lays out exciting new ideas in water management, areas where he expects to see big growth in the coming years.

DECENTRALIZED TREATMENT

Decentralized, or distributed, water treatment will be a key feature of future water management, said Henderson.

“For me it comes down to economics,” he said. “If you can take a single drop of water and use it over and over again at its point of use, that’s going to beat any other technology in the marketplace — because you don’t have to move the water,” he said.

Consider cooling towers, which most buildings and industrial systems use. “Most of the water going into those systems is potable water. It doesn’t make sense. You take billions of dollars in energy and chemicals and processes to treat the water to potable to pump it into a tower where 80 percent of it evaporates.

via Venture Capitalist Reveals Growth Areas for Water Investments – Forbes.