Authors: Stephen Knox, Jane Atterton, Augusto Rocha, Frank Siedlok
The FORTH2O Business & Industry Core Team are exploring how sustainable water use can unlock new business opportunities across the Forth region. Through a series of structured discussions in 2025, the team identified key areas where innovation, local collaboration, and targeted support could make a meaningful difference.
This blog describes the themes that emerged from our workshops. These themes reflect the potential for place-based approaches to support both economic development and environmental resilience.
This blog also outlines the next phases of the FORTH2O Business & Industry team’s research work through 2026 and invites input into this work from our project partners.
The workshops
Our exploration process involved three steps:
- Step 1: Initial brainstorming sessions which identified six key themes with over 25 potential opportunities.
- Step 2: Identified 14 potential actions or interventions that can meet these opportunities.
- Step 3: Refined, combined, amended, and added to these actions to provide us with eight prioritised actions across three main themes.
More detailed insights into the process these workshops followed is presented here.
Area 1: Business opportunities for the generation of energy from water
Three priority opportunities emerged that focused on generating energy from water.
1. Heat generation from sewers – there is existing work going in Scotland to locate areas in which heat can be generated from sewers using data insights on temperature and flowrates.
2. Community heat pumps on barges – Star Renewables have a current concept and are looking for potential places to launch; there could be an opportunity to bring this to the Forth Water Basin.
3. Wastewater recycling – opportunities for identifying manufacturers with heated wastewater and how this can be recycled.
Area 2: Business opportunities for water-based tourism
Three priority opportunities emerged that focused on maximising the Forth Water Basin’s natural assets to attract tourism.
4. Expanding tourist travel plans – an opportunity to understand and extend the connectivity between the Forth’s natural assets and public travel links.
5. Identify water-based tourism opportunities – opportunity to identify the feasibility of expanding existing and identifying new water-based tourism activities.
6. Develop an upstream ‘micro-tourism trail’ – connecting upstream small tourism businesses and communities to create combined value.
Area 3: Enhancing water-efficiency for SMEs through innovation and upskilling
Two priority opportunities emerged that focused on maximising the water efficiency of businesses in the Forth Water Basin (and more widely) through innovation.
7. Business model blueprint – providing training resources for business model adaption to enhance water efficiency and making sure businesses have access to these resources.
8. Education and training needs – identifying what skills, capabilities, and training needs are vital for businesses to be water efficient and ways to provide these services.
Next steps
In 2026 the FORTH2O Business & Industry academic team will work to advance research in line with these three areas. The work will be completed in three periods:
Spring – from January through to May the team will be conducting scoping work to compile insights into what the ‘state-of-the-art’ is in relation to existing knowledge and data. This scoping work includes reviewing existing academic knowledge on how businesses can innovate their business models to be more water efficient and how community innovation can maximise business opportunities from tourism. It will also include policy reviews to explore how water is represented in current government strategy and how businesses are currently supported. We will also explore existing databases to understand what drives current energy efficiency in businesses and the characteristics and behaviours of SMEs participating in circular water and resource management.
Summer – building on the Spring insights work, from May through to September the team will be completing specific primary data projects to get ‘boots-on-the-ground’ insights from the Forth Water Basin and more widely across Scotland. This will include in-depth work into how energy opportunities are created from water and wastewater, how community enterprises can be engaged to build tourism opportunities, and what the baseline for water efficiency is and what future skills are needed for Scottish businesses.
Autumn – October through to December will see the team focus on creating data visualisations for each of the eight priority opportunities working with the wider FORTH2O data teams.
We welcome partner input into these plans. If you would like more detailed work proposals or would like to talk to us about any of our work, please contact stephen.knox@stir.ac.uk.
