FORCES, FACTS AND FIGURES
THE VITAL INTERCONNECTEDNESS
OF CLIMATE~ENERGY~WATER
RESEARCH/WEBSITES/ACTION
VENUES
Included below is research information
and links to websites and reports to help go further in depth about the
widespread and vital climate, energy and water interconnection. These
integrated dynamics along with their resource management implications are
increasingly important and compelling in this 21st century world
amplified by the pressures of population, consumption and economic growth and
liberated by the opportunities of systematic innovation, conservation and
sustainability. The information and links
provided here will be updated periodically throughout the year.
INTRODUCTION
The climate
is critical to the most basic hospitality of life on earth; water, like clean
air, is a most precious and vital ‘resource’ that sustains us and binds us,
while energy is deeply meshed in our working and striving for a better life.
Most regrettably and most pronounced in recent decades, we have set water,
energy and climate on an unintended but vicious cycle of depletion, pollution
and unsustainability. The discombobulated 20th century system from which we
have yet to genuinely evolve, poses the danger of disintegration: from the way
we get our water one leaky municipality by another, which in all accounts for
40% of our entire nation’s energy use, the energy and water wastefulness
abounds; to the way we get our electricity from one dirty utility scale power
plant and inefficient grid to another, the energy and water wastefulness
abounds. The pollution from these sources and malfunctions, not to mention our
own excessive end-use, is - among other health problems - causing human induced
climate change. Climate change by our deeply engrained emission of greenhouse
gases in turn threatens fresh water supplies the world over, overburdens and
destroys the water and energy infrastructure (among countless other harmful
disruptions), directly affects and often increases the demand for energy
and water and entails increasingly significant expenditure of GDP (energy
itself) to cope with all the ramifications. Indeed, the ethic of looking out
for the next generation in America itself is in question with the spiral of
inefficiency, energy and water utility consumerism and widespread disregard for
these most precious dynamics (climate~energy~wter) which preserve life-itself
and the hope for a better life for all.
Yet if we strive for and attain integration of climate, energy, water solutions
– solutions that work in harmony, solutions that decouple economic growth
from water and energy resource exploitation, solutions based on innovation, cost
effectiveness and respect for future generations, solutions reflected by the
smartness of our electricity and water utilities, solutions dependant on the
rise of a new era of responsibility, solutions building a revolutionary system
of efficiency, conservation and renewable resources – we can and we will
not only save water, save energy and save the climate, we will save America and
heal the planet.
INTEGRATION
Go to:
www.crdc.com.au/uploaded/File/E-Library/E-ENVIRO/Climate_Energy_and_Water_May_2007.pdf
for an informative and thorough study of the often underappreciated integration
of energy, water and climate in our world (and with a case study in Australia).
It makes compelling points about:
• ‘Embedded” energy and water uses involved in the life cycle of our economy
including significant energy and water uses for the purposes of food,
electricity & water utilities, trade & transportation and fuels;
• Water being principally used for agriculture (60% of total water use),
followed by utilities, households and other industrial/manufacturing uses;
• How in agriculture there are plenty of irrigation technologies some more
water intensive and others more energy intensive (the key is to pursue most balanced and efficient approaches that
simultaneously conserve energy and water, maximally sustain soil, reduce long
term costs and improve overall productivity);
• The importance of integrated solutions to these integrated challenges in a
world of rising pressure from population, consumption and economic growth
(which without new systems thinking could seriously exacerbate the problems of
these unresolved dynamics);
• The call for decoupling growth in
GDP from increase in primary energy use (energy intensity), water use and
greenhouse gas emissions. Currently increase in GDP mimics increase in energy
and water as well as greenhouse gas emissions. With population, consumption
patterns and growth predictions, that mimicking is not sustainable (especially
with predominate world energy sources being fossil fuel based). How we
should also be striving to decouple energy from water use and water from energy
use;
• With systems thinking and integrated solutions to these challenges, making
gains in one area has positive feedback on the other areas. For instance, a low
GHG emission economy will clearly lessen climate pollution while also
significantly reducing water and energy wastefulness.
CLIMATE
There are countless integrations of climate, energy and water. An example is
that water vapor is the principal greenhouse gas causing climate change ahead
of CO2, methane and Nitrous Oxide. There are many natural ways that the climate
is changing and that energy and water and climate interact. For more on the
natural dynamics GO TO The
Global Energy and Water Cycle Experiment (GEWEX) www.gewex.org
and www.gewex.org/GEWEX-WMO_Bulletin.pdf
for reporting. (GEWEX is Hosting the Water in a Changing Climate
Progress in Land-Atmosphere Interactions and Energy/Water Cycle Research
Conference August 2009)
In this research we focus on
society’s resource choices and impacts.
Human induced climate change is putting a strain on water and energy
infrastructure but is also spurring runaway climate change in the forms of
release of stored methane, melting of sea ice and permafrost. A range of
impacts is already beginning to adversely affect the United States, and our
best scientists and models say they are projected to intensify. Each week
there are reports of new climate-related challenges, existing and
potential: drought-stricken regions in the southeastern and southwestern
US that threaten water supplies for agriculture, energy, and urban areas; early
snowpack melt causing spring flooding and summer water shortages; melting
permafrost and eroding coastlines in Alaska threatening the way of life of
indigenous peoples in the Arctic region; infestations of insects that act as
deadly pests to forested ecosystems such as the pine bark beetle in the Pacific
Northwest; western wildfires; loss of agricultural crops; rapidly shifting
climatic zones and associated ecosystem stresses for plants and animals;
increased disease vectors in human and animal populations; the threat of more
frequent and intense hurricanes and storms like Katrina; and potential
storm surges that could devastate low-lying coastal communities from the Gulf
Coast to New York City subway tunnels.
For climate strategy: from consequences to a prevention and preparedness
initiative see the following site www.climatesciencewatch.org/index.php/csw/details/nccpi_prospectus/
with reporting including the expectation that under hotter and drier conditions
there will be an increased demand for irrigation water, which will, in turn,
cause the water-table to rise. This also as shown below in the water
sections will increase energy use as the energy dynamic is such a prominent
part of our municipal and agricultural and other water systems.
More generally to assesses the scientific, technical
and socio-economic information relevant for the understanding of the risk of
human-induced climate change go to world’s scientific leaders known as
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC) for in-depth understanding – GO TO: www.ipcc.ch
For Climate Action-oriented
websites visit:
www.wecansolveit.org
www.repoweramerica.org
www.pickensplan.org
www.takeresponsibility.us (do the power pledge to enlist in the clean
energy revolution) (local)
ENERGY
The primary ways we produce and
use energy emit unsustainable amounts of greenhouse gases contributing
substantially to global climate change (and as referenced above climate change has
a dangerous feedback effect on water supplies, energy infrastructure and
beyond). Beyond causing climate change, what arises from conventional electric power
generation, the burning of fossil fuels and the whole carbon based economy are
the simultaneous problems of most serious energy and water resource depletion.
The extraction, delivery and processing of fossil fuels used for transportation
and electricity production from fossil fuel sources (coal, gas, oil) are very
energy intensive. Energy intensity h, is the ratio of the
total energy used for construction, operation and decommissioning E, to
the electricity output of the plant/device over its lifetime Et.
What is less known is that
electricity and energy from oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear also requires a
lot of water in both the heating and especially the cooling process. Coal plants
require very pure water to produce steam for their turbines, water for cooling,
and water for the pre-treatment of coal and to prevent spontaneous combustion.
The nuclear option is basically a subset of the ‘waste heat’ approach in coal
plants, with the added requirement of a substantial quarantine infrastructure
(involving energy and water) so that radiation-contaminated heat-exchange
liquids are kept far removed from the water distilled for human uses.
Furthermore, many of the kinds of
energy sources and production mechanisms we are contemplating and implementing
in the transition to sustainability are also very water and energy intensive.
For example, corn stalk (unlike corn byproduct) based ethanol even though it
supports energy independence and helps national security goals requires massive
amounts of water to produce, it is energy intensive compared to the other
alternative fuel options, it diverts land which can otherwise act as sinks to
greenhouse gases and can negatively affect pricing in the food economy.
Alternatively cellulosic ethanol and waste gas for biodeisel are much wiser and
efficient ways to produce biofuels that require less energy and water to
produce. Similarly, when we contemplate a hydrogen energy economy we must be
careful about the implications on energy intensity involved in the splitting of
the water molecule to produce hydrogen. Likewise in water development,
desalination requires massive amounts of energy as compared to end user water
treatment and recycling. The point is to integrate our thinking about energy,
water and climate so we do not wind up with unintended consequences in
resolving our currently unsustainable climate~energy~water dynamics.
The renewable energy sources for
electricity and transportation fuels – wind, solar, hydro, geothermal,
cellulosic ethanol, waste gas, etc. – tend to be the least energy and
water intensive and of course vastly reduce greenhouse gas emissions as
compared to the conventional sources. These, along with major transformations
in efficiency and conservation are certainly a critical component of the long
term sustainability solution.
GO TO www.eere.energy.gov/ba/pba/intensityindicators/delivered_electricity.html
for further energy intensity indicators in the United States.
www.i-sis.org.uk/whichRenewables.php has a
good table below indicating CO2 emissions and energy pay-back ratios of the
following renewable and non-renewable sources. The EPR tells us how much conventional energy we use today in
order to obtain energy tomorrow. As can be seen, conventional coal power plants
have the highest emissions followed by oil, natural gas, biomass. Hydro and
wind have the lowest emissions. Photovoltaic technologies are advancing
rapidly and its the environmental indicators improve year by year and
approaching those for wind and hydroelectric.
The following
is a report prepared for Department of Energy on how energy & water
security are closely linked: www.ucowr.siu.edu/proceedings/2003%20Proceedings/T18C.pdf
which states:
“If coal and nuclear power are major parts of the electric power equation, and
evolutionary technology is used, water will be a major input and constraint.
The key problem is water for cooling. (A secondary problem is water for new
scrubbing technologies to limit air emissions.) As of today, about 40 percent
of our freshwater use in the United States is for power plant cooling. This is
close to the quantity of water used for irrigation and other agricultural uses
(about 42 percent). Although water use for cooling is mostly non-consumptive, it
does have both water quality and consumptive use impacts. Again, the severity
of the problem may best be shown by example. In many river basins, water temperatures
are limiting the expansion of our generating capacity. For example, Tennessee
imposed a moratorium in 2002 on the installation of new “merchant” power plants
because of cooling constraints. These high-efficiency, natural-gas-fired turbines
require large quantities of water for cooling. With current technology, water
cannot be made available for cooling without imposing unacceptable damages to
our aquatic systems. Similar moratoriums have occurred in Pennsylvania,
Washington, and Idaho. Idaho recently ruled that two large power plants
proposed for the Washington-Idaho border should be denied water rights for
cooling. The plants would evaporate nearly four billion gallons each year, or enough
freshwater for about 100,000 U.S. citizens with typical usage. This situation
could become worse in the future with more energy production and climate
change. Innovative and affordable cooling technologies could, and should, be
developed. These new technologies will hopefully reduce or eliminate the need
for water cooling. In fact, cooling technologies already exist that do not
require water, but they are much less energy efficient than water cooled
systems. Thus, even more new power plants would have to be constructed to meet our
nation’s growing electricity demand if these existing technologies were used. Our
nation’s electricity demand is expected to grow significantly, even with the
adoption of new energy efficient technologies. Additional generating capacity
must be constructed to meet growing demand and to support economic development.
And whether it is based on coal, natural gas (merchant plants), or even
nuclear, additional water supplies will be needed for cooling. But will that
water be available? Will the water be available in the locations where the
power plants should be constructed? If power plants are constructed where the
water is available, will there be sufficient transmission and wheeling capacity
to move the electricity to the regions of demand? The argument that our energy
security and water goals will soon clash has become more compelling.”
www.worldenergy.org –
Suggests that two
main factors contribute to decrease the CO2 intensity of the GDP: energy
productivity improvement on the one hand, and a change to energy sources with
lower CO2 emission factors (e.g. gas, renewables, nuclear).
www.wri.org –
The World Resource Institute
offers an excellent resource for climate and energy research
www.nrel.gov
–
The National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL) offers a wealth of resources on energy, alternative energy
resources and beyond.
www.rockymountaininstitute.org
–
The Rocky Mountain Institute is a
must visit to lean more about the growing marketplace of energy efficiency and
renewable energy.
www.nwacc.edu/physicalplant/HowtoConserveEnergyatHome.php
is a good resource for saving energy at home (helpful tips on appliances, water
heaters and more).
www.newenergyeconomy.org –
One Sky New Mexico, a local resource for new energy~policy developments.
WATERGY
Alliance to Save Energy (www.ase.org) coined this phrase “Watergy” to do
with the energy intensity and water wastefulness of municipal water system and produced
an excellent report on systematic ways to improve energy and water conservation
throughout the cycle of society’s water use.
Visit www.watergy.net for general information,
tips and resources including the key report www.watergy.net/resources/publications/watergy.pdf
Some of the reports compelling
findings are as follows:
“Effective management
of leaks [in municipal water systems] can save
enormous quantities of water and energy. Leakage rates can be lowered
dramatically with automated controls that reduce pressure in the network,
especially at night.” This points to the
critical need for a smart water grid just like the call for a smart energy
grid.
Part and
parcel to leak management this report encourages system automation, better metering
and monitoring (“you can’t manage what you don’t measure”) as well as pumps
performance, pressure management (a case study in South Africa, describes a
pressure management project with a payback period of less than three months
that is saving 14 million kWh of electricity and 8 million kL of water - over 2
billion gallons - every year), low-friction pipes, system design and layout,
and basic energy and water audits.
Pumping is a critical component of almost
every step of the municipal water system (from extraction of water from natural
sources, carrying, treatment, delivery to end-users, re-delivery and after-use
treatment) and about 75% of the total cost of this component is the energy cost. Increasingly move to
pump efficiency technology and pump only when needed [another case in point for a smart water grid] instead of too
wastefully.
Whole-scale municipal water
efficiency not only saves water, it save energy, it improves system
productivity and reliability and generates revenue through minimized operating
expenditures and tremendous long tem cost savings.”
WATER
On-site recycling of domestic
wastewater can have the immediate outcome of reducing a household’s water use,
and the longer-term outcome of reducing the load on the municipal wastewater
utility and thereby reducing energy use and climate pollution. On the other
hand desalination plants, while offering a very compelling technical solution
to meeting world water supply needs, must be implemented and managed very
carefully because of the extreme energy intensity implications involved in the
desalinization, water transportation and pumping processes.
The American Waterworks Association (AWWA) at www.awwa.org is a terrific
resource for wide-scale water (and inter-related energy) conservation.
Similarly UNESCO // the United Nations Environment, Science and Culture
Organization has done extensive research and problems solving work in the
area of water conservation and sustainability and in this following excellent report
provides insights into the vital interconnectivity of water and energy.
Source:
Water: a Shared Responsibility.
Part 1. Energy for Water Supply. The UN World Development Report 2 www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr/wwdr2/pdf/wwdr2_ch_9.pdf
Here are some of the key points
in the report:
“Water and energy are two highly
interconnected sectors: energy is needed throughout the water system, from
supplying water to its various users, including urban people, to collecting and
treating wastewater. On the other-hand, water is essential to producing energy,
from hydropower to water cooling in power stations.
The energy savings from water
conservation and the water savings from energy efficiency are inextricably
linked.
Water conservation saves upstream
energy inputs (involved in the extraction, treatment and delivery), end-use
energy inputs (typically to do with residential and commercial heating and
cooling needs) and downstream energy inputs (involved in collecting, treating
and disposing of water).
For example like in the
distribution process, the collection component of the water cycle, requires
electricity based water pumps to boost the wastewater to treatment facilities.
Wastewater treatment requires energy to remove contaminants and send water for
discharge or reuse. In aerobic water treatment, it’s the aeration that requires
energy. Opportunity: waste water treatment plants can recover methane gas from
organics in the water and use this to supply its own energy needs or cell back
to the grid.
Pumping systems (for irrigated
agriculture and municipal water systems) alone account for 20% fo the world’s
electrical energy demand and range from 25 percent to 50 percent of total
energy use in many industrial operations.
Be careful about seeming water
savings technologies like certain major irrigation units that may save some
portion of water in the process but are so energy intensive that it backfires.
Think about energy intensity and
water usage in tandem: for example desalinization is much more energy intensive
than wastewater recycling.
In the United States,
approximately 40% of daily freshwater use if for power generation (even though
most is returned to source, 2% is consumed/evaporated, water availability is
driving the the development of cooling technology for thermal power
application).
Water recycling and re-use,
including a treatment step is generally far less energy intensive than
developing any new physical source of water, other than local surface water.
Integrate energy savings into
water policy decision-making saves money, reduces pollution and can save water
(NRDC ’04 California Report).
Overview: The supply
of water and wastewater services of all kinds to urban areas generally involves
high electrical energy consumption. However, by taking a total system
approach to
energy management in these systems, including energy audits, it is possible to
achieve big energy savings. Water conservation can lead to large energy savings
and vi-sa-versa. substantial efficiency gains in water use will reduce electric
power requirements, which in turn will lead to more savings of water otherwise
used in power generation.”
Local water
conservation sites: www.riversource.net
and www.watershedwiser.org
CONCLUSION
A water- and energy-efficient future in a climate-constrained world will involve
the determination and ingenuity of everyone, man, woman and child. We will also
need vigilant, strong and responsive leadership from all corporate CEOs,
elected officials and civil society spokespeople and at the level of management
of all the dispersed and deeply affected sectors of the economy. The key points
of the preliminary research and links that go in more depth are:
(1) We
need learn much more about these and other integrated dynamics;
(2) We
need to act on what we learn, and act in a wise way – namely:
(3) We
need integrated solutions to these integrated problems (including an energy and
water smart grid merging sustainability with the information super highway) à Develop critical, systematic
thinking and whole-scale problem-solving approaches to these deeply
inter-related challenges;
(4) We
need to decouple energy intensity, water waste and GHG emission from economic
growth and thereby develop a most sustainable economy built on new developing paradigms;
(5) Opportunities
abound for the integration needed, opportunities which will save energy, save
water, save the climate and save financial resources all while improving the
long term productivity and real value of our economy;
(6) Given
the scale of the problems and inefficiencies that exist and the compelling abundance
of opportunities that abound, we urgently need the merger of bright
entrepreneurship, massive incentives, clear price signals (aka a carbon tax), unequivocal
integrity and courageous leadership at all levels of society to solve these
challenges now and in the future.
