Water Impacts | Grasshopper Water Infrastructure, Projects & Investments GmbH

SDG 6: CLEAN WATER IS KEY

Reliable water infrastructure is the backbone of resilient economies.
SDG 6 - Clean Water and Sanitation - sits at the center of the UN Sustainable Development Goals because safe, available water enables health systems, industry, cities, and climate strategies to function.
For infrastructure investors, this isn’t only about social benefit; it’s about risk management, operational continuity, and long-term asset value.

Why SDG 6 is pivotal for infrastructure

System resilience: Public water utilities, hospitals, mobility hubs, and large buildings depend on safe process and drinking water. Robust drinking water treatment reduces downtime, compliance risk, and lifecycle costs.
Productivity and cost: High-quality water improves equipment performance, decreases corrosion and scaling, and lowers energy and chemical use across networks and facilities.
Data and accountability: Modern water systems produce verifiable data streams - essential for regulation, ESG assurance, and performance-linked finance.

Where SDG 6 multiplies impact across other SDGs

Our portfolio spans technology-only projects in centralized infrastructure, decentralized community solutions certified under the Gold Standard, and private-sector deployments (e.g., hospitals, mobility, housing societies, hotels, agriculture).

Across these settings, SDG 6 catalyzes progress on:

SDG 3 – Good Health and Well-Being: Safer drinking water and hygienic process water reduce waterborne disease and hospital-acquired infection risks; better water quality elevates patient safety and worker health.
SDG 5 – Gender Equality: In decentralized settings, reliable safe water reduces time spent—often by women—on boiling or collecting water and fuel, unlocking time for education and income.
SDG 7 – Affordable and Clean Energy: Efficient treatment and right-sized dosing lower energy intensity; reduced RO dependency and optimized operations cut electricity demand.
SDG 8 – Decent Work and Economic Growth: Stable water services improve facility uptime, protect supply chains, and support local maintenance jobs and technical upskilling.
SDG 9 – Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure: We deploy proven, scalable technologies in plants, pump stations, and large facilities—hardening essential infrastructure and digitizing quality control.
SDG 11 – Sustainable Cities and Communities: Utility upgrades and building-scale solutions strengthen urban resilience, from hospitals and airports to housing and hotels.
SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production: Process optimization cuts chemical overuse, shrinkage, and plastic waste from packaged water.
SDG 13 – Climate Action: Our Gold Standard project generates carbon credits by displacing energy- and fuel-intensive water practices; centralized efficiency measures also reduce emissions.
SDG 14 & SDG 15 – Life Below Water & Life on Land: Better treatment and handling reduce pollutant loads, protecting watersheds, soils, and biodiversity.
SDG 17 – Partnerships for the Goals: We work with utilities, technology partners, communities, hospitals, airlines, and manufacturers to deliver bankable, verifiable outcomes.

How impact is evidenced across project classes

Centralized infrastructure (utilities and large plants): Continuous monitoring, regulatory compliance metrics, non-revenue water reduction, process efficiency, and energy intensity per m³.
Decentralized, Gold Standard-certified program: Third-party verified outcomes including safe-water access, emissions reductions, and co-benefits (e.g., time savings and household health indicators).
Private-sector solutions (hospitals, mobility, buildings, agriculture): Facility-level KPIs such as infection-control support, downtime avoided, packaged-water elimination, chemical and energy savings, and productivity gains.

What investors can expect

We design for durability, measurable performance, and transparent reporting. Each investment case combines the fundamentals of infrastructure -asset reliability, regulated demand, and operating efficiencies—with clearly articulated water impacts. In short: investing in water infrastructure advances SDG 6 and, through it, strengthens the systems that make economies work.

2.2

billion people

Lacking safely managed drinking water services (WHO 2022)

200

million hours / day

Water collection
Time women and girls spend every day fetching water (Unicef)

~0.1

kWh / Liter

Boiling energy
Physics-based energy to heat 1 liter from
~25 °C to 100 °C at
the water side; real stoves need more.

300k - 365k

child deaths / year

Under-5 deaths from diarrhoeal disease linked to unsafe WASH
(≈700–1,000/day, Unicef)

SDG 6 and SDG 13: Water & Climate

Water & Climate: the big picture

Climate change is felt first and foremost through water - too much, too little, or too dirty. Shifts in monsoon patterns, longer dry spells, flash floods, glacier retreat, saltwater intrusion, and rising water temperatures all converge on a single constraint: reliable, safe water.

As hydrological variability increases, cities, hospitals, mobility hubs, industry, and agriculture face higher operating risk and cost. That is why SDG 6 (Clean Water and Sanitation) and SDG 13 (Climate Action) are inseparable: water security is both a frontline adaptation need and a major mitigation lever across energy use, logistics, and materials.

Where our projects connect SDG 6 and SDG 13

We don’t drill wells or build dams. Our contribution comes from technology-only solutions deployed in three settings—central infrastructure, decentralized/community programs, and private-sector facilities. Across these, we reduce climate risk (adaptation) and cut emissions (mitigation) by improving water quality and system efficiency.

1) Decentralized safe water (Gold Standard program): avoid boiling water

In many regions, households achieve microbiological safety by boiling water—an energy-intensive practice typically powered by firewood, kerosene, LPG, or grid electricity. Heating water to drinking temperature is physics-heavy: roughly a tenth of a kWh per liter at the water side; real-world stoves push the requirement much higher. Scaled across tens of thousands of households, daily energy demand and related emissions are enormous.

Our certified, modern disinfection technologies replace boiling entirely, cutting fuel use and CO₂ at household scale while delivering verifiable health gains and time savings—particularly for women and children. The result is SDG 6 delivered with audited SDG 13 impacts.

2) Centralized infrastructure (utilities, plants, pump stations): do more with fewer kWh

High-efficiency pumping and smart control (e.g., variable-frequency drives, pressure management, optimized pump scheduling) reduce electricity consumption for one of the most energy-intensive steps in the water cycle: moving water.
Targeted, right-sized disinfection and process optimization cut chemical overuse and backwash losses, improving energy and carbon intensity per m³.
Non-revenue water reduction (leak detection and pressure optimization) means less abstraction and less pumping for the same delivered volume—lowering both cost and emissions.
Digital monitoring hardens climate resilience (operational continuity during heatwaves, flood events, or supply shocks) while creating auditable performance data for investors.

3) Private-sector solutions (hospitals, mobility, housing, hotels, agriculture): efficiency and substitution

Hospitals & large buildings: reliable microbiological quality reduces downtime and compliance risk; right-sized treatment can curb unnecessary RO use and packaged-water dependence—saving electricity, plastics, and logistics emissions.
Mobility sector (airlines, aircraft manufacturing, airports): safe process and drinking water at point-of-use lowers reliance on bottled water and improves operational reliability in heat-stress conditions.
Housing societies & hotels: eliminating packaged water cuts plastic waste and transport; efficient building-level treatment trims energy per liter delivered.
Agriculture: optimized water quality and pressure management reduce pumping hours and equipment wear, improving yield per kWh.

Bottom line for infrastructure investors

By treating microbiology precisely and running systems efficiently, water projects become climate projects. They protect operations against hydrological volatility (adaptation) and remove avoidable energy, fuel, and transport from the water value chain (mitigation). That is the practical link between SDG 6 and SDG 13—and it’s exactly where our portfolio delivers measurable, scalable results.