Open Access: Untapping the sustainable water bank's public financing for Dutch drinking water companies

The Dutch Water Bank (NWB), which was created in the 1950s, still provides long-term, low-cost, low-risk patient and appropriate financing to public entities. It is a model that has worked, but not without room for improvement. The NWB has an opportunity to untap its support of Dutch drinking water companies’ sustainability transitions. To do so, it needs to embrace its ‘publicness’: leveraging its position within the Dutch public sector to catalyse water investments in the public interest. The NWB offers important lessons for global debates on public banks and sustainable transitions. The Nederlandse Waterschapsbank (NWB-Dutch Water Bank), recently rebranded as 'the Sustainable Water Bank' in response to the global climate crisis and Sustainable Development Goals, offers a unique insight into the world of dynamic public banks. In promoting expansion and universal coverage, the Dutch government pushed the Dutch drinking water companies (DWCs) to merge to reap economies of scale and to allow larger water companies to absorb the costs of servicing difficult-to-connect rural areas. In deciding on the timing and size of investments, DWCs are restricted by regulations setting out a maximum weighted average cost of capital. The NWB has enormous untapped potential to provide the type and scale of financing needed by the DWCs to ensure sustainable, predictable, reliable and equitable public water provisioning into the future. In the coming decades, the Dutch water supply sector needs to address the challenges of population growth, pollution of water sources, and climate variability.