The global water crisis is both growing but increasingly solvable. In 2025, over 60% of the world population is expected to face water crises, up from around 25% today. However, innovative technologies, business models, and financial solutions are becoming increasingly available.
Unfortunately, the lack of dedicated water investment platforms has contributed to the challenge in scaling solutions. Antelope was founded to address the water crisis through scaling investment opportunities, deploying solutions across industries and sub-sectors, and integrating best available technology, partnerships, and business models.
Specifically, to address the growing water challenge, Antelope deploys a platform approach to identifying opportunities in three critical water areas including: 1) Industrial Technology, 2) Data and Mapping, and 3) Infrastructure. All three sub-sectors are ripe for disruption, are opportunity rich, and scalable through a partnership approach.
Industrial Technology
Increasing drought, more stringent environmental regulatory requirements, and growing awareness of contaminants are some of the drivers behind increased wastewater treatment and reuse. Industrial Technology, including membrane technology, advanced evaporation, and new cooling tower reuse technologies will be key beneficiaries. Resource recovery, including the ability to extract value-added by-products (like lithium, rare earth elements, and iron) represents another important next generation technology.
KMX Technologies, an Antelope Company, is a hollow-fiber vacuum membrane distillation provider able to achieve recovery rates of up to ~98%. KMX’s zero-liquid discharge and resource recovery capabilities position it at the high-end of next generation Industrial Technology solutions.
Data & Mapping
The industrial water sector as well as municipal providers and infrastructure owners have been slow to adopt and leverage emerging technologies. This stems from the backbone of U.S. water infrastructure having been pieced together over 100 years. Further, while much of the water infrastructure has been designed to last 25 to 50 years, some is still in service due to upgrades or in many cases a lack of resources. As a result, there is a unique opportunity to integrate emerging technologies including sensors, advanced mapping, and AI into legacy infrastructure to identify and minimize environmental concerns and operational inefficiencies.
At Antelope, we have developed a proprietary GIS mapping system that identifies and integrates environmental risks and liabilities into our investment process. Our mapping platform also represents a growing opportunity to visualize and understand environmental contaminants, sensitive water bodies, wildlife considerations, and downstream implications for wastewater producers. As the cost of quantifying environmental liabilities and risks becomes clearer, we think mapping and data visualization represent significant environmental solutions and investment opportunities.
Infrastructure
The energy transition over the coming decades presents a significant capital deployment opportunity for sustainable water infrastructure. According to the World Bank, production of lithium, graphite, and cobalt will need to increase by over 450% by 2050 to meet the goals outlined under the Paris Agreement. Copper, aluminum, nickel, and other metals, which also have substantial fresh and wastewater implications, are expected to undergo significant absolute growth as well. In oil & gas, higher treatment standards and increased environmental and local stakeholder scrutiny will also drive a new wave of water infrastructure investment.
Like energy, we anticipate post-COVID supply chain changes in manufacturing, food & beverage, pharmaceuticals, and the chemical industries to also usher in a need for sustainable water infrastructure. Structural multi-year growth in domestic data centers and associated IT infrastructure will present additional cooling and wastewater treatment demand.
As a result, we see significant investment opportunities in sustainable water infrastructure in the decades to come and are continuously cultivating a pipeline of unique projects that aim to deliver both stakeholder benefits and predictable and attractive long-term cash flow.
Collaborative Approach
Antelope is continuously exploring future water trends and conducting diligence on unique water opportunities. We also look to explore ways to collaborate and partner on current water projects. Please reach out to learn more about the Antelope approach to solving water challenges and to discuss collaborative ideas.
