Zhengzhou Xinqu water-energy nexus project wins IWA Grand Innovation Award 2026

The International Water Association (IWA) has announced the winners of its 2026 Project Innovation Awards, with the Grand Innovation Award going to 'Transforming Wastewater into Value: A Megacity-Scale Water-Energy Nexus Model'. The project was entered by Zhongyuan Environmental Protection Co., Ltd. for the Zhengzhou Xinqu Wastewater Treatment Plant in China.

The IWA said the awards attracted 320 entries from 65 countries, with 23 finalists shortlisted across six categories. The prizes are presented biennially at the World Water Congress & Exhibition, where this year's ceremony took place on Tuesday 6 October 2026 at The Auditorium, Oran Mor, Glasgow.

The congress, held at the Scottish Event Campus from 4 to 8 October under the theme 'Water action - the path to resilience and prosperity', drew around 10,000 participants.

The gold winners

The Zhengzhou entry completed a double, also taking gold in Market-changing Water Technology and Infrastructure. Silver there went to Israel's IDE Water Technologies for the Cherokee Metropolitan District TDS Reduction and Water Reuse Project. Bronzes went to a low-energy vibrating membrane bioreactor project from Tsinghua University, Beijing Originwater Technology and Taicang Water Group, and to the first quaternary micropollutant treatment plant in Flanders, by Sweco Belgium and Aquafin.

In Performance Improvement and Operational Solutions, gold went to Portugal's Aguas do Douro e Paiva for 'From Waste to Roof Tiles: a Circular Economy Approach in the Portuguese Water Sector'.

The Breakthroughs in Research and Development gold went to Beijing University of Technology and Shenzhen Water and Environment Group for an anaerobic/oxic/anoxic (AOA) process achieving deep nitrogen and phosphorus removal at Shenzhen Binhe Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Hassyan 180 MIGD SWRO Independent Water Project in the United Arab Emirates, from Power Construction Corporation of China, SEPCOIII Electric Power Construction and ACWA Power International, won gold for Exceptional Project Execution and Delivery.

Kenya's Lamu County Government took the Governance, Institutions and Social Enterprise gold with the Kiunga Solar Desalination and Water-for-Peace Initiative. Spain's EMASESA, the Sevilla water utility, won Smart Systems and the Digital Water Economy gold for 'The Digital Reservoir', a cyber-physical systems approach to integrated water cycle management.

Notable silvers and bronzes

Host-country bronze went to Scottish Water's Winchburgh Wastewater Treatment Works in the performance category, alongside Singapore's PUB for 'World's Lowest Energy MBR with the Integration of MABR and AGS Technologies'.

VA Tech Wabag took silver for the 150 MLD Digha and Kankarbagh integrated wastewater project in Patna, India. KWR Water Research Institute of the Netherlands was recognised for AI-enabled strategies for future-proof water systems, and Shenzhen Smart Water Co. with Shenzhen Water and Environment Group for a megacity water loss management system.

Bronzes included the City of North Miami Beach's AI-enabled utility resilience ecosystem, Beijing Kingtrol Data Technology's DataMine big data platform, the Chinese Academy of Sciences' nature-based work on cyanobacterial odour mitigation in the world's largest estuarine drinking water reservoir, water loss reduction in Wroclaw, Poland, and city-wide inclusive sanitation in Bangladesh led by the CWIS-FSM Support Cell at DPHE.

This briefing was prepared by The Stratawire's AI newsroom from the published sources listed with it, fact-checked against those sources by a second AI model, and reviewed by an editor before publication.