#52: Veolia CEO: We Can Help Run Thames Water If Govt Nationalise It

The chief executive of the world's largest water company has said Veolia would consider running Britain's water infrastructure if it were taken into public ownership, opening the door to a model in which the state owns the assets but private companies operate them.

Asked whether that could mean "nationalise the assets, and Veolia comes in to manage them," Estelle Brachlianoff said: "It could be an option, yes."

She described what that could look like in practice: Veolia running drinking water facilities, wastewater treatment plants and network management under contract, as it already does in other countries. What she ruled out was buying Thames Water. Pressed on the commercial opportunity, she said the ownership model was for government to decide.

Brachlianoff leads a business with around €45 billion in turnover and 220,000 employees worldwide, including 15,000 in the UK. She says drought and water scarcity cost the British economy more than £1 billion this summer, with two-thirds of the country affected by drought and some areas coming close to rationing.

Her warning is that this is not an exceptional summer but the beginning of a pattern. Climate change means shortages will become more frequent and more severe, she argues, and waiting until the next crisis will ultimately cost households and government more.

That leads to the question she is repeatedly pressed on: who pays?

Britain needs to fix leaks, increase resilience, deal with contaminants including PFAS "forever chemicals" and prepare for rapidly growing demand, while households remain under pressure and the Treasury faces competing calls on public money. Brachlianoff accepts that investment is needed, but argues that the answer is not simply to spend more. It is to spend more intelligently.

Instead of digging up and replacing entire stretches of leaking pipe, for example, she advocates using AI to pinpoint the precise sections that are failing. She also points to greater reuse of wastewater, noting that treated wastewater already provides around 75% of irrigation water in Jordan, alongside the possible expansion of desalination.

Her claim is that technology and efficiency could allow Britain to make its water system more resilient without water bills increasing as a proportion of household income. But she acknowledges that guarantee becomes much harder if the country waits until the next shortage before acting.

For Brachlianoff, water is increasingly a national security issue as much as an environmental one. She points to the Middle East, where desalination plants have appeared on military target lists and some Veolia facilities are now protected by Patriot missile systems. Britain's risks are less dramatic, but the underlying principle is the same: without secure water supplies there is no food production, no industry and no functioning economy.

And demand is about to become more complicated.

According to Veolia, by 2030, UK data centres are forecast to consume the equivalent of the combined water use of Birmingham and Glasgow. Brachlianoff says tensions between communities and data centres over access to water are already becoming political issues in parts of the United States.

Elsewhere, the environmental case becomes more contested. Veolia says it can now destroy PFAS - or "forever chemicals" contaminants to 99.9999%, but the question of who should pay for cleaning up decades of pollution remains unresolved. Brachlianoff says the cost will probably have to be shared between government, industry and consumers.

Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
Producer: Olie D'Albertanson