22/10/2025
Gruppo CAP among the key players in the CLIMWATER project
The project will investigate the impacts of climate change on the integrated water cycle, with a focus on Milan and its surroundings

The project CLIMWATER - Climate-resilient and mitigation actions for sustainable water management, financed by the Lombardy Region under the Collabora & Innova call, will start in October 2025. It aims to promote complex industrial research and experimental development projects carried out in collaboration with SMEs, large enterprises and research organisations. It aims to encourage strategic investments for the development of product and process innovations.

CLIMWATER ranked third out of 100 candidate projects and will last two years and three months. The total budget is more than €4.6 million, of which more than €1.8 million will be allocated to Gruppo CAP as the leading partner in three of the five Work Packages.

Working alongside Gruppo CAP will be Acqua&Sole, Biochem Solution, REF Ricerche and the University of Pavia, Invernizzi Agri Lab of SDA Bocconi, and there will also be external collaborations from Politecnico di Milano and the University of Milan.


Three directions to tackle climate change

CLIMWATER was created with the objective of investigating the impacts of climate change on the integrated water cycle, with a focus on Milan and its surrounding area, and proposing innovative solutions to increase the resilience of the water system, improve the sustainability of water purification systems and plants, and contribute to emission and energy neutrality.

The three macro-activities in which Gruppo CAP is involved are:

  • Water supply resilience (Work Package 1): in collaboration with the University of Pavia and REF Ricerche, an advanced hydrogeological model based on machine learning will be developed to perform risk analysis and climate adaptation strategies to support infrastructure planning.
  • Monitoring of climate-changing emissions (Work Package 2): Gruppo CAP conduct direct monitoring campaigns of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in at least six civil urban wastewater treatment plants, before and after maintenance work, to assess their impact and update the Company's environmental performance indicators (KPIs).
  • Innovative sludge treatment (Work Package 3): in collaboration with the University of Pavia and Biochem Solution, fungal strains will be selected and tested that are capable of reducing the amount of sludge produced and degrade micropollutants and can help obtaining products to be used in agriculture such as soil improvers and biostimulants.