Ofwat Water Breakthrough Challenge: Catalyst Stream

The Ofwat Water Breakthrough Challenge, through its Catalyst stream, will award innovative, water company-led entries between £150,000 and £2 million per entry through a single-stage entry process. Solutions can be of any level of development, provided they are innovative. Due to its smaller funding amounts, the Catalyst stream can provide a pathway to test early-stage innovations, developing their value proposition before seeking further funding elsewhere (for example, future rounds of the Transform stream).

The lead entrant must be an appointed “water company” (a water and/or sewerage undertaker or infrastructure provider) in England and Wales.

The Catalyst stream aims to encourage new ways of working that go beyond business-as-usual innovation practices in the water sector, in particular increasing and improving collaboration and building partnerships from within and outside the water sector.

The four strategic innovation themes are:

1. Responding and adapting to climate change, including how to meet the sector’s ambition of net-zero carbon, zero waste, and zero leakage.
2. Protecting and enhancing the environment and natural systems to protect current and future customers from the impacts of extreme weather and pollution.
3. Delivering long-term operational resilience and understanding infrastructure risks to customers and the environment, finding solutions to mitigate these in sustainable and efficient ways.
4. Testing new ways of conducting core activities to deliver the services customers and society need, expect, and value both now and in the future.