Lhe observation on the availability of our water resources is alarming: restrictions on use affected more than 67% of French territories in 2020, and forecasts show a possible reduction in surface water of up to 50%. by 2070. Faced with this observation, the water plan sets an objective of reducing withdrawals by 10% by 2030, or 1.8% per year on average. At the same time, we want to reindustrialize our country, for our territorial cohesion, for our sovereignty, for the environmental transition.
However, water is essential to any productive process, and the debate on its consumption by industry is open, as evidenced by the examples of Bridor in Brittany or STMicroelectronics in Grenoble. Industry withdrawals, 4% of the current total, declined by 1.8% per year on average between 1995 and 2020, but this is mainly because of deindustrialization. Reindustrializing would therefore amount to increasing water consumption by industry in a context of tension over the availability of this resource. Faced with this major challenge, three areas of progress can be identified: first, process improvement and technological innovation.
For example, the sugar company Cristal Union, with the installation of reverse osmosis systems, has reduced its water withdrawals from the natural environment by almost 57%. Some manufacturers also take into account an internal price of water (like a carbon price) to anticipate tensions on the resource and guide their investment decisions. Other approaches involve cooperation between actors. The 90% of industrial samples returned to the natural environment can become a resource for other industries, which represents a reduction in initial samples.
A priority: sharing data
However, if the public authority has precise knowledge of the volumes taken and uses and makes it public on the portal of the National Bank for Quantitative Water Sampling (BNPE)there is, most of the time, no shared data that lists the quantity and quality of wastewater, even though the latter could become a resource for an industrial project, and therefore a criterion for choosing location.
However, this is already how the Dunkirk industrial basin already operates, which has proven itself – on water as on other by-products of activities – for the establishment of gigafactories by relying on its tool of “Industrial canvas”. Finally, to govern is to anticipate. Sometimes with original or avant-garde ideas. We will have more and more restrictions on use, that’s for sure.
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