The Complex Relationship and Looming Crisis Between Our Thirst For Water and Our Hunger for Energy
November 22nd, 2013
Via the Water, Food, and Energy Security Platform, an announcement of a new World Bank initiative:
To mitigate the challenges of the nexus, the World Bank Group recently started Thirsty Energy, a global initiative in partnership.
Thirsty Energy will contribute to the Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative by evaluating trade-offs and synergies between water and energy planning. It will also identify potential constraints resulting from their interdependency.
In July, the U.S. Department of Energy and the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) released reports (see
U.S. Energy Sector Vulnerabilities to Climate Change and Extreme Weather and
Water is critical for producing power, and vice versa. Almost all energy generation processes require significant amounts of water, and the treatment and transport of water requires energy, mainly in the form of electricity. Even though the interdependency between water and energy is gaining wider recognition worldwide, water and energy planning often remain distinct. The tradeoffs involved in balancing one need against the other in this “energy-water nexus,” as it is called, are often not clearly identified or taken into account, complicating possible solutions.
Population and economic growth, urbanization, and increasing demand for food and energy place competing pressures on water. According to the IEA’s
In the U.S. several power plants
To mitigate the challenges of the nexus, the World Bank Group recently started
One of the pilot countries selected for Thirsty Energy is South Africa, a country with important water issues and large energy expansion plans. The Bank is working with partners there to incorporate water allocation quantities by catchment area and marginal costs in energy optimization tools and plans. This enables planners to assess, using economic tools, whether or not, or to what extent, cross-sectoral competition will impact the technology mix in energy generation. Through case studies such as this, the Bank aims to reduce energy projects’ vulnerability to water constraints, and encourage water and energy to be planned in an integrated manner to maximize benefits. Through Thirsty Energy, the Bank and its partners will work to break disciplinary silos that prevent cross-sectoral planning and learning and to ensure the “sustainability” factor in Sustainable Energy for All.
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Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”