{"id":2745,"date":"2026-10-14T07:29:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-14T07:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/northline.es\/?p=2745"},"modified":"2026-10-14T07:29:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-14T07:29:38","slug":"wastewater-directive-cost-spain-iagua-data-estimate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/northline.es\/en\/wastewater-directive-cost-spain-iagua-data-estimate\/","title":{"rendered":"iAgua Data puts the investment Spain needs under the new wastewater Directive at around \u20ac5.8 billion to 2045"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>iAgua Data, the report series of the Spanish water portal iAgua, has calculated how much Spain will need to invest to comply with Directive (EU) 2024\/3019 concerning urban wastewater treatment. It is iAgua&#8217;s own model-based estimate, not an official figure. In the central scenario, the works the Directive requires at treatment plants add up to \u20ac5,813 million of investment between 2026 and 2045. The low and high scenarios put the range between \u20ac2,805 million and \u20ac11,863 million.<\/p>\n<p>The calculation is done plant by plant. The model takes the 2,322 treatment plants that Spain included in its report to the European Commission with 2022 data and assigns each one the obligation that applies to it according to its size, its measured discharge and the receiving water body. Costs come from curves calibrated with 90 projects and checked against 50 upgrade projects in Spain. Amounts are in 2025 euros, excluding VAT.<\/p>\n<p>Among the findings:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Half of the investment falls on the 95 plants of 150,000 population equivalent or more: \u20ac1,527 million to upgrade tertiary treatment (nitrogen and phosphorus) and \u20ac1,373 million for quaternary treatment, which removes micropollutants.<\/li>\n<li>The effort peaks between 2034 and 2039, at \u20ac449 million a year, twice the rate at the start and end of the timetable.<\/li>\n<li>Based on their measured discharges, 89 of the 390 large and medium-sized plants affected already meet the new nitrogen and phosphorus limits.<\/li>\n<li>Investment plus twenty years of operation of the new facilities: \u20ac11,070 million.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The central figure leaves out overflows and the energy neutrality of treatment plants, which the report values separately at around \u20ac7,500 million more, with less precision.<\/p>\n<p>Who pays for quaternary treatment remains an open question. The Directive assigns at least 80% of its cost to manufacturers of medicines and cosmetics: investment, operation, monitoring and verification. According to the model, that comes to around \u20ac4,300 million over twenty years in investment and operation, not counting micropollutant monitoring. Poland has challenged that rule before the Court of Justice of the EU (Case C-193\/25) and, according to the report, on 3 September 2026 Advocate General Kokott proposed annulling Article 9(1)(a) and Annex III. There is no judgment yet. If the Court follows the proposal, how it is funded will have to be decided afresh: through another legal basis for industry, through tariffs or through public budgets.<\/p>\n<p>The report acknowledges that the cost of quaternary treatment is the most uncertain assumption in the model and the first it will revise once Spanish plants are built: Spain does not yet have any full-scale plant with published costs, and the curve has been calibrated with 29 plants in Switzerland, Germany and Luxembourg.<\/p>\n<p>The Directive&#8217;s timetable for tertiary treatment was summarised in <a href=\"https:\/\/northline.es\/en\/spain-bulgaria-poorest-river-quality-europe-iiama-upv-study\/\">the article on the IIAMA-UPV study<\/a>. Wastewater treatment is one of North Line&#8217;s areas of work.<\/p>\n<p><em>Sources: iAgua Data (2026), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.iagua.es\/cuanto-cuesta-a-espana-la-nueva-directiva-de-aguas-residuales\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">&#8220;Cu\u00e1nto cuesta a Espa\u00f1a la nueva Directiva de aguas residuales&#8221;<\/a> (How much the new wastewater Directive costs Spain), iAgua, report 01, October 2026, licensed under <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CC BY 4.0<\/a>. <a href=\"https:\/\/eur-lex.europa.eu\/eli\/dir\/2024\/3019\/oj\/eng\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Directive (EU) 2024\/3019<\/a> of 27 November 2024, Article 9. Image: Ondarroa wastewater treatment plant (Biscay, Spain). <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Ondarroako_ur_araztegia.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Ibai1984<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-sa\/4.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">CC BY-SA 4.0<\/a>, via Wikimedia Commons (cropped).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iAgua Data, the report series of the Spanish water portal iAgua, has calculated how much Spain will need to invest to comply with Directive (EU) 2024\/3019 concerning urban wastewater treatment. It is iAgua&#8217;s own model-based estimate, not an official figure. In the central scenario, the works the Directive requires at treatment plants add up to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>iAgua Data puts the investment Spain needs under the new wastewater Directive at around \u20ac5.8 billion to 2045 - NorthLine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/northline.es\/en\/wastewater-directive-cost-spain-iagua-data-estimate\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"iAgua Data puts the investment Spain needs under the new wastewater Directive at around \u20ac5.8 billion to 2045 - NorthLine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"iAgua Data, the report series of the Spanish water portal iAgua, has calculated how much Spain will need to invest to comply with Directive (EU) 2024\/3019 concerning urban wastewater treatment. 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