Photo retrieved from: www.aljazeera.com
“Pictures taken by NASA satellites reveal an alarming loss of freshwater in the Middle East.
Two important rivers are disappearing, and if they vanish millions of people will be affected.
In just seven years, 144 cubic kilometres of water has been lost.
Al Jazeera’s Gerald Tan explains.”
Read more: Aljazeera
Photo retrieved from: www.asme.org
“Each year brings new pressures on water. One-third of the world’s people already live in countries with moderate to high water stress. Competition is growing between farmers and herders; industry and agriculture; town and country. Upstream and downstream, and across borders, we need to cooperate for the benefit of all – now and in the future,” “he added.
The General Assembly proclaimed 2013 International Year for Water Cooperation in 2010, following a proposal from Tajikistan. The Year will serve to raise awareness and prompt action on the multiple dimensions of water cooperation, such as sustainable and economic development, climate change and food security.
“Over-exploitation, management, financing of water resources, all of these aspects are incredibly important and cooperation at different levels is therefore critical,” UNESCO Science Specialist Ms. Ana Persic, said during a media briefing to mark the start of the Year at UN Headquarters in New York, USA.
Persic added that the benefits of intensifying cooperation include poverty reduction, equity, economic growth, and the protection of the environment.” “We know water is critical for human life, but it is also critical for life on Earth if we want to protect and sustainably manage the planet we have.”
Read more: All Africa
Photo retrieved from: www.bloomberg.com
“In the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, 158,438 residents of the city of Copiapo suffered daily cutoffs of tap water last year as Anglo American Plc and other companies helped suck nearby aquifers dry for their mines. With little water left for drinking or mining, the government of President Sebastian Pinera convinced the companies to seek a solution to the water crisis 60 kilometers away from Copiapo — on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.
London-based Anglo American is spending $107 million to build a desalination plant on the coast that will pump about 120 liters (32 gallons) a second of water through the desert to its Mantoverde copper mine. Set for completion in the second half of this year, the project will provide enough salt-free water, which is used to separate copper from ore, to operate the mine. Two other companies are building similar desalination plants in an effort to keep Chile’s mining-driven economic boom alive, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its March issue.”
Read more: Bloomberg
Retrieved from Water.ca.gov
The California Public Goods Charge- A Tantalising First Glimpse of Policy Success?
by Miles Ten Brinke
Miles, Peak Water columnist and avowed Hydrophilic energy-head, has found his way to Britain where he’s lost his California perma-tan and is studying an Energy Policy
Today, I’ll be writing about a fascinating Nexus case-study I’ve recently come across in my research. That is, of the California policy programme around a Public Goods Charge (PGC). Basically this is a charge added to consumer utility bills which both potentially serves as a price signal for conservation and provides funding for public interest projects related to that utility (there’s a more technical and perhaps more accurate definition but that’s the main gist of it).
Currently there is no PGC in California, but there was one previously and the potential for one specifically built around the Water-Energy Nexus. From about 1996-2011, California had a PGC on electricity but the state legislature failed to renew it and so the policy ended 1st January 2012. There are however efforts to reinstate the kWh PGC, and perhaps even more interestingly to implement a new water PGC.
In this entry I’m going to lay out the basics- how the CA PGC regime came about and what it entails. Later on I’ll cover who’s involved and what’s been done (some details on the policy mechanisms). After that, a longer-form entry making an initial policy analysis.
The original PGC was born out of an era in California policymaking history I’m not all that keen for but which has shaped the very face of its contemporary development- deregulation and market liberalisation during the mid 90s into the early 2000s. A PGC is indelibly a market mechanism, an approach which over the past 40 years has come to dominate policy thinking around the world (to my estimation, especially in the US and UK). Much has been written about the market liberalisation of western economies since the 70s, of the Thatcherite years in the UK and US Reagonomics among many other examples. California, especially its energy sector, was heavily shaped over this period of largely neoliberal governance.
In my early, and yes I very well may not only revise but entirely reverse my position as I learn more, estimation however the 1996-2011 PGC is actually a successful mixed command-and-control/market mechanism instrument (and the same is probably true of those proposed PGCs). For better or worse, its been described as a green tax, with consumers bearing the cost. In a subsequent entry I’ll delve more into the political economics, but it seems thus far that it was not (and likely will not be) an undue burden with public benefit far outweighing costs. This is arguably so even for the consumers paying it. So far as I’ve read through the grey literature (fun catchall term for governmental, regulatory, policy analysis and media coverage of policies) I’m liking what I see.
An energy and/or water PGC increases the cost of consumption and can provide funding for nexus public interest programs. When the kWh one was still around it brought money to the state’s energy efficiency, renewables generation, renewables R&D and low-income assistance efforts with a prioritisation of energy efficiency and low-income assistance. It was relatively low-cost. A water PGC would most likely help to fund Integrated Regional Water Management Plans (IRWMPs) primarily for water conservation and efficiency. The great potential utility of linking this into IRWMPs is the principles of subsidiarity and localism- that you should govern at the most effective scale for the issue and that in the case of water resource management this is at the regional and local levels.
Really this all comes back to down to climate change, and California’s mitigation legislation AB 32 and the Air Resources Board’s Scoping Plan. That is, to achieve a reduction by 2050 of 80% 1990 level emissions and by 2020 of 30% 1990 level emissions. One of the state’s primary strategies towards achieving this is energy and water efficiency, of explicitly thinking about the Nexus. From desalinisation to water treatment and simply pumping the resource from place to place water is very energy intensive. At the same time, from petrol to power stations the energy system too consumes a lot of water. The destructive impacts not only can be minimised but must be, for the general socio-natural welfare and not just emissions targets. The PGC regime has the potential to play a very important and dynamic role in ensuring the coalition of actors engaged in this endeavour come through successfully.
More to come on this fascinating subject, stay tuned!
~ Miles on Water
Photo retrieved from: www.alternet.org
“When groundwater reserves ran low in the 1940s, the region turned to Lake Mead. Today, the Las Vegas area gets 90 percent of its water from the no-longer-very-mighty Colorado River as it is corralled behind Hoover Dam in Lake Mead. And now that’s threatened. A new federal study released in December found that the over-allocated Colorado River will be further stretched by climate change, drought and climbing populations. By 2060, the river will be short of what its dependents in seven U.S. states need by 3.2 million acre-feet a year. (An acre-foot of water is roughly enough for one suburban family per year.)
So what’s a city — or really, its water manager — to do? A smart gambler wouldn’t bet on the Colorado.
SNWA is in the midst of an $800 million project to insert another “straw” into Lake Mead. This is the third intake pipe built for the lake — the last two proved not deep enough to keep up with the lake’s falling levels. But this is just part of the plan. Another part comes with a bigger pricetag — estimated as high as $15 billion — and involves building hundreds of miles of water pipelines and related infrastructure to tap water from four rural valleys in eastern Nevada’s White Pine and Lincoln counties.”
Read more: Alternet
Retrieved from Gracelinks.org
Plying the Water-Energy Nexus
by Miles Ten Brinke
Miles, Peak Water columnist and avowed Hydrophilic energy-head, has found his way to Britain where he’s lost his California perma-tan and is studying an Energy Policy MSc at the University of Exeter on a Fulbright.
Growing up the in the American Southwest is an education in the triumph of human ingenuity and the creeping hazards of its peril. From Palm Springs to Las Vegas we’ve made the desert bloom- a green oasis of shopping malls, suburban lawns and sprawling golf courses. It is a socio technical system built on a foundation of innovative engineering large and small, from the proliferation of air conditioning to the California aqueduct and the Hoover Dam. Even amidst the bust of the Great Recession and its aftermath, the boom of these places is so resonant* it’s easy to forget just how fragile and contingent the whole enterprise truly is. Climate change looms ahead, and the water’s running out. Even amidst all the changes ahead, the world’s driest places will see their rains dwindle. They’ll only get drier. In the Southwest, the Colorado no longer feeds into the sea. In California in particular, the vast majority of the water (and other resources) is consumed in the South yet it’s sourced in the North. This system defined by overconsumption is no longer tenable; the region’s decision makers need search out viable alternatives. Much as the global energy system needs a transition to a more equitable, secure, efficient and decarbonized alternative so too must our water socio-technical systems change. I’ve personally come to be defined by that reality.
Though I’ve lived now around the world, for the vast majority of my life my family and I lived in the Southwest, split mostly between Las Vegas and the Inland Empire of Southern California. We lived in Vegas for most my primary and secondary education, my folks moving us to California when I started high school. It’s where I started my post-secondary education, at Mount San Jacinto College. These spaces, Nevada and California, have shaped me and the course my life’s taken. Resource management is a priority for any public policy, but it’s vital in the desert. For all the clever development, water shortages are an ever-present and deepening concern in these places. The efficient consumption of water and other resources is both a necessity and a central source of contention. People get used to their cars, to their lawns, their shopping malls, housing developments and rapid economic growth. We forged an oasis and struggle to maintain it. This dynamic, this dilemma is one I’ve grappled with from the onset of my career in energy over five years ago. I got my start in Socal as a student participant in a K-12 energy efficiency education program which provided the training, tools and support to conduct an energy audit of one’s campus and even implement changes. The lesson, amidst the greatest recession we’d known since the 30s, was the value maximal throughput at minimal expense. Our resources are finite, precious. How we choose to consume defines not only our economic activity, but shapes our culture and socio-natural landscapes all around us.
This has resonated with my experiences ever since. Through further jobs and voluntary work I came to an understanding of everyday energy use efficiency beyond simply the kWh; demand management in energy policy is as much about the careful management of our water for the future and the planet as innovations in energy conservation and technologic efficiency. Energy and water are inextricably linked, whether the connection between the energy inputs to the mass agricultural sector of California and its behemoth thirst or suburban sprawl with its house-as-castle populism and everything in-between. These parallels and intersections are deep, and many.
After completing a B.S. in Society & Environment at UC Berkeley focusing on Global Environmental Politics I’m now on a Fulbright-University of Exeter Postgraduate Student Award pursuing an Energy Policy MSc at the Exeter Cornwall campus. I’m in my second term now, developing another energy specialism-in water policy as it relates to energy. From this entry on, Peak Water readers you can join me on this new path as I explore the energy-water nexus. I’m as a much a student on this journey as you, let’s pursue it with an unquenchable curiosity and a humble openness to learn. Maybe in the process we can even start to shape a new vision of the global water transition, of its interconnections with energy and its realization.
Best of luck to us along the way, it should prove an interesting ride.
~ Miles on Water
Photo retrieved from: www.ipsnews.net
“After Hurricane Sandy swept through the northeast of the United States late October 2012, millions of New Yorkers were left for days without electricity. But they still had access to drinking water, thanks to New York City’s reliance on protected watershed areas for potable water.
Instead of using electric-powered water treatment plans, New York City brings its high-quality drinking water through aqueducts connected to protected areas in the nearby Catskill/Delaware forests and wetlands – just one example of how protecting watersheds can provide residential areas with drinking water and flood and pollution protection at bargain basement prices.
New York saved between four and six billion dollars on the cost of water treatment plants by protecting forests and compensating farmers in the Catskills for reducing pollution in lakes and streams.
In 2011, countries around the world invested more than eight billion dollars in similar watershed projects around the world, according to the State of Watershed Payments 2012 report released Thursday. That year, China led the way, accounting for 91 percent of watershed investment.”
Read more: IPS
Photo retrieved from: www.chinadialogue.net
“The Tibetan Plateau covers approximately a quarter of China’s land area, spreading out over 2.5 million square kilometres in the west of the country. Home to the largest store of freshwater outside of the poles, it feeds water into Asia’s major rivers which supply water to over a billion people. As a result of anthropogenic climate change, temperatures are rising on the Tibetan Plateau faster than anywhere else in Asia. The effects of these changes are becoming more evident in the form of melting glaciers, intensified weather events, increasing desertification and degraded grasslands.
In the town of Heishui, in northern Sichuan province, the effects of climate change are being felt firsthand by the people who reside in this south-eastern corner of the plateau. The Dagu glacier which sits above the town lies at over 5,000 metres. But it’s quickly retreating due to rising temperatures in the region. Just 50 kilometres downstream, the water run-off from the glacier slows and stagnates behind one of the country’s largest and newest hydropower constructions, the 147-metre high Maoergai Dam.”
Read more: China Dialogue
Photo retrieved from: www.nationalgeographic.com
“Forty years ago, when the farming started, there was a staggering 120 cubic miles (500 cubic kilometers) of water beneath the Saudi desert, enough to fill Lake Erie. But in recent years, up to five cubic miles (20 cubic kilometers) has been pumped to the surface annually for use on the farms. Virtually none of it is replaced by rainwater, because there is no appreciable rain.
Based on extraction rates detailed in a 2004 paper from the University of London, the Saudis were on track to use up at least 400 cubic kilometers of their aquifers by 2008. And so experts estimate that four-fifths of the Saudis’ “fossil” water is now gone. One of the planet’s greatest and oldest freshwater resources, in one of its hottest and most parched places, has been all but emptied in little more than a generation.
Parallel to the groundwater pumping for agriculture, Saudi Arabia has long used desalination of seawater to provide drinking water. But, even for the cash-rich Saudis, at about a dollar per 35 cubic feet (one cubic meter), the energy-intensive process is too expensive to be used for irrigation water.”
Read more: National Geographic
Photo retrieved from: www.greenprophet.com
“The cows raised at the Al Safi and Almarai farms live better than some humans in air-conditioned sheds and water misters that keep them cool. But feeding them with grain grown nearby has depleted 4/5th of the Kingdom’s ancient aquifer in the last 30 years. For milk. The farms are facing closure as a result of water shortages, but instead of giving up altogether, the Saudis are buying up land and water elsewhere – including the already vulnerable Nile.
The Nile was apportioned in 1929 by colonial powers, an issue that has created great tension among Nile River Basin countries in the last few years. Egypt relies almost entirely on this river for its population’s survival, but upstream countries feel that they have been shortchanged by that country’s monopoly.
Ethiopia has been particularly vociferous, though the main instigator of a slew of new dams and hydroelectricity projects, former Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, died in August, 2012. But not before allowing Saudi Star, owned by Sheikh Mohammed Ali Al Amoudi, to purchase large tracts of land near the headwaters of the Nile in Gambela.
Member of the local Anuak Tribe talked to National Geographic about the firm’s usurpation of land and water. At the time of writing, the company was digging a canal to drain nearby wetlands and their 24,711 acre relies on a reservoir built in the 1980s by Soviet engineers.”
Read more: Green Prophet
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