In this interview with Oke Peter, Lauren Greenlee, Executive Vice President, Food + Water + Waste at XPRIZE, speaks on the escalating global water scarcity crisis and the organisation’s efforts to accelerate innovation in desalination through the $119 million XPRIZE Water Scarcity Competition. She underscores the urgent need for affordable, sustainable, and scalable solutions to expand access to safe drinking water, particularly in water-stressed and underserved communities. Greenlee also explains how the competition is mobilising innovators worldwide to develop breakthrough technologies that can produce potable water from seawater more efficiently and at lower costs, with the potential to transform water security on a global scale. Excerpts:
What is your organization doing to address global water challenges?
Everyone on the planet is experiencing some form of water stress. Across the world, 80% of the global population faces severe water scarcity, and by 2030, we will lack 40% of the water needed to meet global needs. Although the desalination industry is mature and growing, it has seen few major breakthroughs since the early 2000s. XPRIZE’s current water competition, Water Scarcity, is focused on seawater desalination, where the industry has stalled in deploying breakthrough innovations and operates with a cost structure that limits global deployment and accessibility. XPRIZE Water Scarcity is driving innovation to exponentially increase access to more reliable, sustainable, and affordable desalination solutions to address the mounting global water scarcity crisis. Beyond XPRIZE Water Scarcity, we are building a future pipeline of prizes that will push innovators to create solutions that go well beyond where technology is today, with the goal of tackling barriers in the sector that are unlikely to be solved through conventional approaches.
Reports show that about 26% of the world’s population still does not have access to safe drinking water. In your view, what practical steps can be taken to ensure water is accessible to everyone, especially in Africa?
To address access to safe drinking water globally, multiple solutions are needed, and local and regional contexts are required for success. There also needs to be capital deployment and project financing, coupled with policy and regulatory action. In the technology space, there are many regions in the world that could benefit from access to alternative water sources, such as salt water, through desalination. Desalination is the process of converting saline water, such as seawater or brackish water, into fresh, usable water by removing dissolved salts, minerals, and other impurities through advanced treatment methods. However, the cost of desalination technology has remained too high for many countries to implement widely for drinking water access. For these reasons, we see desalination technology as an enabler of access if costs can be reduced and the process made more sustainable and reliable. The core goal of XPRIZE Water Scarcity is therefore to drive widespread access to clean water by creating reliable, affordable, and sustainable seawater desalination systems. We see several key opportunities in the teams competing in XPRIZE Water Scarcity and their technologies. The team cohort is developing decentralized, adaptive, and resource-efficient systems. By designing flexible, modular systems that can scale down to support small-to-medium-sized communities—or even be deployed offshore—we can bypass infrastructure bottlenecks and bring the water source directly to the people who need it. We also see teams exploring different market opportunities for their technologies and expect many of the innovations that emerge from this competition to be relevant to other water treatment scenarios and water sources, such as inland and brackish water desalination. Novel materials, advanced separation techniques, and highly durable membranes can be easily transferred to inland water treatment applications, such as brackish groundwater desalination. Track B of our competition is dedicated entirely to these materials, seeking a 10+ year operational lifetime that minimizes maintenance costs for remote communities.
Can you explain the XPRIZE Water Scarcity Competition and its overall goal of improving global water security?
XPRIZE Water Scarcity is a $119 million, multi-year prize designed to drive widespread access to clean water by creating reliable, affordable, and sustainable seawater desalination systems. Competing teams will develop new desalination technologies to unlock global access to Earth’s ocean water, helping create a world where clean water is equitably and sustainably abundant and enabling people and the environment to prosper. The competition includes two separate technical tracks: Track A focuses on system-level innovation and scale-up, while Track B focuses on breakthrough innovations in materials and methods for the salt-water separation stage of the overall desalination process. XPRIZE Water Scarcity was created through a partnership with The Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative.
Lauren Greenlee, Executive Vice President, Food + Water + Waste at XPRIZE
How has the winner of the $119 million XPRIZE Water Scarcity Competition contributed to strengthening global water security so far?
There is no winner just yet. Grand prize winners will not be officially determined and announced until Q4 2028. However, just a few weeks ago, XPRIZE officially announced the semifinalist teams that are moving on to the next phase of physical testing. Semifinal testing is taking place throughout the remainder of 2026. To move on to the finals, Track A teams must scale up their systems to continuously generate 100,000 litres of potable water per day (100 m³/day) over a four-week period. Across both Track A and Track B, we announced 37 semifinalists.
Thirty-seven semifinalist teams from 15 countries will be announced today in the $119 million, multi-year competition. Do you believe this reflects a truly global reach, considering the number of participating countries?
While 37 semifinalist teams are moving forward now, the competition initially mobilized interest from 86 different countries, drawing 674 pre-registrations. That shows the global community overwhelmingly recognizes water scarcity as an urgent, universal challenge. While XPRIZE Water Scarcity focuses specifically on seawater desalination, the teams and the competition have raised awareness and brought attention to global issues surrounding water. Beyond seawater desalination, the teams involved represent a global reach into communities and businesses around the world that are focused on solving water access and safe drinking water availability challenges.
What are the eligibility requirements for participating in the competition, and can applicants apply from anywhere in the world?
Eligible teams can apply from anywhere in the world, subject to competition rules and applicable regulations. XPRIZE competitions are driven by teams of innovative groups and individuals, comprising subject matter experts, enthusiasts, start-ups, student teams, amateurs, and all problem-solvers in between. A winning idea can come from anyone, anywhere.
Who are the major sponsors and partners supporting this initiative?
The competition is a realization of the vision of its title sponsor, The Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative, to support creativity and innovation aimed at addressing the threat of global water scarcity. Through its global programmes and activities, the Initiative works to accelerate innovation, raise awareness, and support the development, testing, and large-scale deployment of solutions that can help create a world in which water is accessible, affordable, and sustainable for all.
How do you monitor and manage funding to ensure transparency, accountability, and effective use of resources?
Our role is to ensure that milestone funding is awarded only to teams that successfully meet the competition requirements and pass the judging evaluation process. Once awarded, it is up to the teams to decide how they use those funds. Although the majority of teams use milestone awards to advance their technology to the next round of testing, we do not manage how they use any of their awarded funds.
Can you highlight some of the solutions developed by previous winners? In your assessment, are these solutions sustainable, scalable, and affordable for widespread adoption?
While we do not have winners yet, during the Qualified Teams stage of the competition, teams put their ideas into practice through field testing and validation. Track A teams deployed operational desalination prototypes at their selected sites, producing at least 1,000 litres of potable water per day over a continuous two-week period while meeting local environmental standards and regulatory requirements. Track B teams validated their novel separation materials and methods at laboratory scale, with results evaluated based on technical maturity, performance efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and sustainability in preparation for live demonstrations.
What is your organization doing to address the challenges of water desalination, and can you share some notable success stories?
XPRIZE Water Scarcity directly addresses technological challenges in desalination that exist today and that the industry is not incentivized to solve. These challenges include creating desalination solutions that lower the capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expenditure (OPEX) of the technology, while also addressing reliability and sustainability issues that limit desalination system deployment in many parts of the world. Ultimately, our goal is not just to evaluate technology but to catalyse a wave of new innovators who can transform the economics and accessibility of water at scale. By combining expert vetting with clear, measurable milestones, our goal is to ensure that every dollar of the $119 million prize purse accelerates solutions with the potential to be both sustainable and equitable. This is what makes the XPRIZE model so effective: we de-risk breakthrough innovation, attract fresh players into existing markets, and help move humanity closer to a future where clean water is abundant, affordable, and resilient in the face of climate change. Along the way, we have also built a global ecosystem that extends beyond the innovators themselves to include partners, funding resources, policymakers, and communities. It is this ecosystem that will collectively transform the desalination industry and expand access to the technology and, therefore, to safe drinking water for many more people globally.
Looking ahead, what should the world expect from your organisation over the next three years?
Over the next three-plus years, XPRIZE Water Scarcity will uncover teams that will truly change the face of desalination by translating their innovations into deployed technologies, opening up new markets, and breaking down existing cost barriers. Beyond XPRIZE Water Scarcity, we will expand our prize pipeline to tackle other imminent challenges at the intersection of food, water, and waste.
