Energy required to solve water crisis

For those living in the world’s most impoverished rural areas and urban slums — the so-called “bottom billion” — water shortages and the inability to access energy feed disease and discontent.

Rectifying this situation must take precedence on any development agenda. Former US president John F Kennedy famously captured the immensity of this challenge and also its value when he said: “Anyone who can solve the problems of water will be worthy of two Nobel prizes — one for peace and one for science.”

A new report released today on the occasion of World Water Day drives home the message that for efforts in this vein to be successful, water and energy must be addressed as the interdependent and interlinked domains that they are.

The 2014 United Nations World Water Development Report, entitled “Water and Energy” and compiled by Unesco’s World Water Assessment Programme, emphasises how each of these resources affects the other’s availability. Water is needed for energy development and generation, for example, while energy is required to supply, use, and treat drinking water and wastewater.

Understanding the so-called “water-energy nexus” and planning accordingly will be crucial to future development, the report finds — and this is particularly pressing in the Asia-Pacific region. This region is home to 61% of the world’s people, with the population expected to reach 5 billion by 2050. The foundation-shifting transformations taking place throughout Asia-Pacific — particularly in China and India — come with skyrocketing costs in terms of resources.

The amount of fresh water available in Asia per capita is half of the global average; almost 380 million people in this region lack safe access to drinking water. Combine that with a huge spike in energy consumption in this region, from barely one third of global use to 51-56% by 2035, and the dimensions of the looming resource challenge facing Asia-Pacific becomes apparent.

Part of this run on resources is due to the fact that much of Asia-Pacific’s economic growth relies on fossil fuel sources. In 1990, the region accounted for 38% of the world’s total CO2 emissions, most of which come from fossil fuel consumption. That number leapt to 50% in 2009 to keep pace with regional growth. And there is no sign of this trend rolling back — the overall demand for coal in Asia is projected to increase by 47% in coming years.

With demand in both sectors projected to surge in coming decades, the linkages between water and energy will become even more starkly apparent and their ramifications increasingly severe.

The situation is further complicated by perception. Water is seen by many as a “gift of nature” and access to it a human right, while energy is not regarded as such and carries considerable political and economic clout. Water is cheap, so energy producers have little financial incentive to use the resource sparingly. The increasing scarcity of water is nonetheless placing pressure on water intensive energy producers to seek alternate approaches. The choices they make can harm water resources.

Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, are the top two global producers of palm oil and China is the third-largest producer of biofuels in the world. Although it provides a cleaner energy source and is a potentially strong economic driver, the biofuel industry has large water requirements that could exceed capacity in some regions. Some Asian transboundary river basin areas have become hotspots where issues and challenges for both energy and water have political and socio-economic implications.

The report highlights the need to manage trade-offs and maximise mutual benefits across multiple sectors. Synergies are essential to ensure mutual benefit and multiple opportunities exist to co-produce energy and water services. Combined water and desalination plants, combined heat and power plants, using alternative water sources for thermal power plant cooling and even energy recovery from sewerage water are among the possible approaches.

The report calls on all stakeholders in water and energy to increase the level of coordination and collaboration between the two domains. Practitioners in both must broaden their focus beyond their narrow mandates and find win-win options that result in savings for both sides.

However, the authors also note that not every situation offers these opportunities. There are cases where competition for resources can arise or there is genuine conflict between water and energy aims, meaning some degree of trade-off will be necessary.

The report concludes with recommendations on what shape public response could take: developing coherent national policies affecting the different domains; creating legal and institutional frameworks to promote these policies; ensuring reliable data to monitor decisions; raising public awareness; supporting research and technological development; ensuring availability of finance and allowing markets and businesses to develop.

These actions will help foster the enabling environment that is necessary to bring about the changes needed for the sustainable and mutually compatible development of water and energy.