What happens to corporate water commitments post 2030? Paul Fleming, who built Microsoft’s water-positive pledge, has a view. He’ll share it in his keynote at WWEMA’s Annual Meeting in Nashville, Nov. 3-6, and previews it here.
Water Daily: You’ve had quite an extensive career in the water industry. Tell us more about it.
Paul Fleming: I’ve worked for a large municipal utility, a large corporate, I’ve advised startups and investors, and have served on the boards of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). I’ve been lucky to view water issues through a variety of different lenses.
The early part of my career was at Seattle Public Utilities (SPU). Half of my tenure was spent on regional and state water policy. The second half was focused on climate resilience and leading SPU’s efforts to understand probable futures for the water cycle in the region. I explored ways to build organizational (and water sector) capacity to adapt, build resilience, and ensure system reliability.
My team and I worked with the research community to “co-produce” climate impact assessments of SPU’s systems and actionable science under different scenarios. We had sea level rise in our remit as well. It was a heady period of time and super interesting.
I left there and went over to Microsoft to start their global water program in 2018. Initially, I was surprised that Microsoft was looking to hire someone with a water background. But they had established a lot of leadership and thought around carbon, electricity, and energy, and they were looking to extend that work into water. So I established the program and designed and implemented the company's 2030 water-positive commitment, which was adopted in 2020.
At the time, “water-positive” was an emerging framework for how companies could anchor their stewardship and water commitments. A big part of ours is replenishment, which entails making investments outside of the fence lines of your facility in the community and in the watershed, in ways that generate tangible benefits. That was and still is anchored around a volumetric benefit. The goal is to invest in projects that generate benefits greater than your direct operational consumption. I made investments in about 19 projects before I left, just ahead of the huge run-up associated with AI and the water consumption associated with data centers.
This has gotten on the radar of a lot of communities. Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon have all subsequently adopted the commitment that Microsoft made and are making investments outside their fence lines. I don't have a hard count, but between the four of them I think there are probably at least 300 projects around the world.
I left Microsoft in July 2021 and started my own company, WaterValue, LLC. That’s my third chapter. While I was at Microsoft I met some founders of water-focused startups, as well as people who advise them, and I liked the idea of working with small companies for which water and/or climate issues are their primary focus.
I thought my background in the utility, corporate, and nonprofit worlds could be helpful. In my current role, I advise startups, scaleups and investors in the water and climate space and engage in more traditional consulting projects focused on water, strategy, and climate resilience. In addition, I have some concepts I incubate.
You spent more than 20 years at Seattle Public Utilities. How did water infrastructure evolve during your time there?
On the drinking water side, SPU had already been a couple years into a strong focus on water conservation when I joined. It was usually framed as a demand management strategy but it also served, in a way, as a “new” source of supply.
At its peak, the water conservation program built an impressive portfolio approach to conservation across industrial, commercial, and residential customers, leaning on codes, federal appliance standards, and rebates to swap out showerheads and the like. That shift preceded me, but it really grew during my time there—not on my account! I watched it become a fundamental part of resource management.
By the late 2010s, the Seattle system was using about the same amount of water it had in the late '50s, but with an additional 300,000 or 400,000 people. Some of that was deindustrialization, but a big part was that people and businesses were simply using water more efficiently.
The second shift was on the urban drainage side, with the emergence of green stormwater infrastructure (GSI). It was super interesting to see how GSI was being deployed, tested, and blended into the utilities overall capital and operations and maintenance (O&M) portfolio. It bore some similarities to the evolution that happened on the water supply side, but had the added element of potentially shaping and influencing the shape and feel of the city.
How have you seen climate considerations factored into capital investment decisions, either in your time at SPU or in your current work?
One of the biggest challenges for those working on assessing climate impacts was translating the analysis into “actionable science.” Creating “plausible futures” or “climate altered hydrologies” wasn’t easy, but figuring out how to get that information embedded into capital planning entailed a whole other set of challenges.
A group that I was deeply involved in, and chaired at one point, the Water Utility Climate Alliance (WUCA), focused a lot on decision support and planning under deep uncertainty and realized that utilities need to adapt not just the water systems we manage, but also in how they plan. A colleague at Denver Water spearheaded that effort. Recently, WUCA released a white paper focused on engineering design guidance and climate resilience. It was great to see how that group continues to push the envelope and help the water sector build its capacity.
Earlier this year, I co-led a project with John Matthews from the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation to develop and revise criteria for water resilient infrastructure for the Climate Bonds Initiative, a London-based NGO. Hopefully this can serve as another way to get climate resilience embedded into capital planning.
What are your goals for WaterValue, LLC?
I had three personal goals when I started WaterValue: work with good people, drive impact, generate value, and be valued. OK maybe that’s four. I want to help organizations that are focused on water and climate challenges and opportunities succeed. It could be a startup with an innovative service, an investor looking to deploy capital, or an NGO deploying tools to support national adaptation planning. This can play out in an advisor or consultant capacity, or take on fractional roles with organizations.
I also have a couple ideas of my own that have been gestating for a while that I hope to bring forth. I like having the latitude to develop new concepts that haven’t been deployed quite yet.
You’re the keynote speaker at WWEMA’s Annual Meeting this year. Can you give a high-level overview of what you’ll cover in your presentation?
The main component of what I'll talk about is where I think corporate water stewardship needs to go to drive true impact. A lot of companies across several sectors have made significant commitments and are actively implementing them. Some WWEMA members, like Kurita, Xylem, Grundfos, and Veolia are members of the Water Resilience Coalition, which is trying to drive coordinated action on water stress and water crises.
Many of these commitments are anchored around 2030, which is coming up, so the big question is what happens after 2030—and even before that—how should corporate water strategy evolve? One scenario is that companies say they’re done. But I just can’t see that happening given the state of water issues. Another is to re-up the same type of commitment for the next 10 years. I don’t think companies will want to settle for that and I don’t think it’s sufficient.
Given that, what might renewed and refreshed corporate water commitments look like? I’ll share some thoughts on that, leaning on my time spent looking at water through the lenses of public utilities, large corporations, small startups, water investors, and water and climate NGOs.
Editor’s note: This interview was edited for length and clarity.
