Urban and Water Thematic Group event
The Urban and Water Thematic Group invites you to join a conversation on the water sector in the UK. The session will be through Webex (see link information below). For those in the DC area who would like to join others in HQ, there will be an opportunity to attend the broadcast in Room MC4-300 and gather for lunch after the session.
Moderator/Panelists:
- David Ehrhardt, Chief Executive Officer of Castalia, a consultancy firm with extensive experience in private provision of service, will be the moderator for the session that will be in a “live interview” format with two specialists familiar with the sector
- Wiliam (Bill) Kingdom (former World Bank Global Lead for the Water Practice) – now International Consultant based in the UK
- Mr. Tony Ballance, former Director of Regulation of the water utility Severn Trent (UK).
Synopsis: Thames Water, the utility that provides the water supply and wastewater (WSWW) service to 10 million people of the greater London (UK) area was privatized in 1989. The main objective pursued at that time was to inject discipline and efficiency into operations and ease the burden on municipal finances. Indeed, many international investors ranging from sovereign funds of Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, China, Ontario (Canada), the German utility giant RWE and the Australian investor Macquarie have been Thames Water key shareholders. After 35 years, despite billions invested to modernize an aging infrastructure, the WSWW service is still characterized by high losses and pollution of water bodies. Moreover, the accumulation of sizable debt (about 14 billion UK pounds) and poor performance of the utility have led the UK Government to ways of intervening, including the possibility of re-nationalizing it.
Panelists’ bios:
- Bill Kingdom is a global specialist on water supply and sanitation in developing countries. Until recently he was the Global Lead for Water Supply and Sanitation in the Water Practice of the World Bank and a lecturer at Oxford University where he taught Governance, Institutions and Regulation. During his career he has worked extensively in South and East Asia, Southern Africa, the Middle East, UK, USA, and Canada. He has led urban and rural water supply and sanitation projects with a range of public enterprises in both developed & developing countries, supported regulators, provided policy advice to government & municipalities and implemented a number of innovative PPP projects from small town water supplies to performance-based leakage reduction contracts. He has authored many papers including on financing the SDG agenda, capital efficiency, off-grid urban water supplies, developing well-run utilities, policy/institutions/regulation, and aggregation in service delivery.
- Tony Ballance is an experienced regulatory economist with over twenty years’ experience in senior corporate, consultancy and regulatory roles. Tony is presently Chief Strategy & Regulation Officer at Cadent Gas Ltd – the largest of the UK’s gas distribution businesses – where he leads the company’s decarbonization strategy and regulatory interface with Ofgem the energy sector’s regulator. Prior to Cadent, Tony was Director of Strategy & Regulation at Severn Trent Water where he performed a very similar role – and was on the Severn Trent Plc Board for eight years. He has previously worked as an economic consultant in the utilities sector for Stone & Webster and London Economics with extensive international/developing country experience – as well as Ofwat’s Chief Economist. Tony is a passionate environmentalist and conservationist and is Chairman of the National Forest Company and a Trustee of the Soil Association. He is also a Council Member of the Regulatory Policy Institute and lectures on regulation at the London School of Economics.
- David Ehrhardt is a global expert in the sanitation and water sector with over 30 years of experience advising governments, utilities, and development agencies on water sector regulation reform and private participation in water investments. He has advised 75 privately financed water and wastewater projects worth over US$10 billion. He has supported private and development financial institutions in developing PPP project pipelines for wastewater reuse and non-revenue water reduction investments. Mr. Ehrhardt is qualified in law and economics and has worked in over 50 countries globally. He started his career in the New Zealand Treasury as a Regulation economist. Then, he worked for London Economics advising on water sector reform and regulation. Currently, he is the CEO of Castalia, a company that works to improve the policy, law, finance, resource management, and service provision of infrastructure sectors globally. As a leading regulatory and policy advisor for water and sanitation, Mr. Ehrhardt has been engaged by international agencies to prepare best practice guides and reports on regulation, governance, and public private partnerships. This includes the World Bank’s Water PPP Toolkit and the performance-based contract guidelines for non-revenue water reduction.
Note: To ensure that the interview provides answers that many of us may have on the evolution of the sector and lessons learned, please send any questions that you may want to be addressed to Alex Bakalian (alexbakalian@gmail.com) by Monday February 26, 2024. There will also be an opportunity to raise questions at the end of the session.
Please RSVP, if you plan to attend in person.
RSVP here!
Venue: MC 4 – 300
Webex connection details:
On February 29th, you can directly join the session by using the link and details below:
Join Webex
Join by browser/meeting number:
Meeting number: 2314 694 4346
Password: Society1818
Join by phone
1-650-479-3207 Call-in number (US/Canada)
Access code: 2314 694 4346
Global call-in numbers
