Smart Sewers? Europe Bets on Digital Twins

Across Europe, digital twins are reshaping wastewater plants, boosting efficiency, cutting emissions, and preparing utilities for stricter rules

8 May 2025

Along the Douro River in Portugal, wastewater engineers are peering into a parallel world. It exists not in pipes and pumps, but in code. There, treatment plants run twice: once in concrete and steel, and once as a “digital twin”, a virtual model fed by real-time data.

Across Europe such twins are moving from theory to practice. Utilities hope they will modernise ageing networks, cut energy use and meet ever-stricter European Union discharge rules. Wastewater, long managed by manual checks and legacy systems, is becoming a test case for digital infrastructure.

In Portugal an EU-funded project is piloting the technology in working facilities. By simulating flows and loads as they happen, operators can test responses before acting in the real world. Chemical dosing can be adjusted more precisely. Storm surges can be anticipated. Equipment failures can be flagged early.

“This technology gives us a new level of control and insight,” said an engineer involved in the project. “We can simulate high-risk scenarios and act in advance, before any real damage occurs.”

Early evidence suggests gains in energy efficiency and more consistent compliance with EU limits. Because treatment plants are heavy users of electricity, even small improvements matter. Lower energy bills and fewer regulatory breaches offer a practical incentive for adoption.

Technology firms are keen to help. Companies such as Schneider Electric provide digital platforms and integration tools used by utilities across Europe, and argue that smarter systems will make water infrastructure more resilient. Yet enthusiasm meets constraint. Many plants lack the sensors required to feed accurate data into a model. Integrating new software with decades-old machinery is rarely simple. Smaller municipalities, in particular, face funding gaps and shortages of skilled staff.

Policy may push matters along. The European Commission is weighing standards to speed up digitalisation in wastewater management. Regulation, often seen as a burden, could become a spur.

Even then, digital twins are no cure-all. They promise foresight, not perfection. If they succeed, treatment plants may evolve from reactive facilities into managed systems that recover energy and nutrients as well as clean water. But the pipes beneath Europe’s streets will still demand investment in the physical world. The virtual one can only guide it.