CONNECTED CONSUMPTION
WATER-ENERGY NEXUS
WHAT IS THE WATER-ENERGY NEXUS?
energy, water, food production
Some of our greatest concerns around sustainability today are making sure that human beings all around the earth have access to working energy, clean water, and accessibility to food. Already so many people do not have basic opportunities to these resources and with populations projected to grow at rapid rates, and natural resources showing signs of increasing scarcity, these concerns become more pressing and risky. What has been found in recent years is that although water and energy are developed separately, they are closely intertwined with one another. Water is used during the generation process of energy sources, such as electricity, fuel, and oil. So ultimately, with no water, there is no energy production. What happens if we don’t have energy? The reality of not having energy would mean that not many people would survive without it because it is how so many people even have access to all these resources to keep them alive.
As our cities continue modernizing, there is an increase in demand for more energy. What has been happening recently to support that demand is that more land is being developed for energy production. But the catch with taking this land is that it takes away the opportunity to use that open space for agriculture, which has similarly seen an increase in demand, with the more numbers of mouths to feed and demands corporations are willing the pay the price for. Now, competition has sparked between the two industries over space to meet their sector's demand and that is why in most studies they are seen as integrated issues because they tend to rise and fall together in unison. Water plays a big role in agriculture because it is needed to grow crops and support production, and as mentioned before, energy is required for the production, generation, and distribution of energy. All three sectors of water, energy, and agriculture intertwine with one another - imagine a stool, and those sectors are the three legs that hold us together. If one of those legs were to go down, the rest would be likely to follow. This is what the water-energy nexus means, it holds context to humankind's greatest responsibility to keep communities alive and thriving.
According to California’s Department of Water Resources, around “12 percent of California’s total energy use is related to water.”, and is typically used for the pumping of water from underground aquifers, moving water from one location to another (water conveyance), treating water to make it drinkable, and heating and cooling water (State of California, 2022). Activities such as this are directly correlated to the amount of greenhouse gas emissions we pump into the atmosphere which affects the intense consequences of climate change we already are seeing today. By helping create integrative solutions in a nexus approach, not only would we be solving complex socioeconomic problems but simultaneously combating climate change and environmental issues.
"We cannot assume the future is like the past in terms of climate, technology, and the evolving decision landscape."
U.S Department of Energy
Achieving water, energy and food security for everyone is one of the greatest challenges humankind faces today... This video was commissioned by the Global Water System Project (GWSP) as an introduction to this pressing 21st century challenge.
The video was launched at the International Conference "Sustainability in the Water-Energy-Food Nexus", held in Bonn, Germany on May 19th and 20th 2014.
This video by the GWSP, is important in educating the public on the current impacts of the water-energy nexus issue and reiterates the complexities of the intertwined sectors in an easily understandable way. The video also gives a brief look into what it means when solutions are implemented and how one strategy within one sector, the water sector, for example, would eventually develop potential positive or negative solutions depending on what kind of development is implemented. Although the ideas are complex and trying to find solutions that only bring positive impacts to all sectors is difficult, it will require joint global responsibility and collaboration of scientists and policymakers. It addresses that there are many knowledge gaps still that will eventually be filled through cooperation and through trials of policy, and only through evidence-based information will we begin to make progress. This video is overall a call to action for the public to hear and engage them to begin thinking about these issues in a serious manner, how they affect people around the world today and the people of the future, but most importantly, that there is hope in finding the perfect nexus approach to achieve sustainability all over the world.
TED TALK: WHY EVERYTHING YOU CONSUME IS CONNECTED
Andy Wales
In this TED TALK by Andy Wales, he discusses current debates that surround the water-energy-food nexus and general resource scarcity. What is quite significant about this lecture is that we learn that human ingenuity has the ability to solve problems with our resource scarcity and that we are more than capable of figuring out our way out of this complex problem. It is mentioned that for decades there has always been worry over the scarcity of some resources and that we need to think about them in a much more integrated way. In this lecture there are explanations of specific pressure points from each of the sectors and that although sometimes the huge challenge can seem like a negative spiral, it can be a spiral of opportunity. Wales dives into the economic strategies that can be incentivized to become much more efficient, as well as government and the labyrinth of policies that can be improved for better resources strategies for water, agriculture, and energy. It is suggested that it is of huge importance to implement a sense of competition to become much more resource-efficient, and we will see an improvement in the psychology of a sustainable lifestyle because the idea will become much more of an attractive ideal.
MOOCS LAB
In this video, we learn from Mario Giampietro, an ICREA professor at the University of Barcelona about the idea of nexus solutions and social perspectives on what it means to be more efficient and about the world in general. It addresses the doubt that many people carry when facing huge problems that seem so complex, that it seems impossible that humans even have the capacity to figure out the puzzle. Giampietro suggests that this is because we often find ourselves using old narrative tools to understand a planet that no longer exists. This video puts the idea of nexus in a different light which indicates that there is simply a problem in the terms of sustainability, current science is not able to handle the problem properly, and we may not have the right set of ideals within governance that are capable of handling these issues. Throughout this course video, he explains the dependence on fossil fuel energy and how much we are externalizing environmental problems and other societies and ecosystems. Sometimes it is easy to allow for complex problems such as this to become overwhelming, but simplifying it and splitting up each term and understanding them separately will allow for better analysis to make more useful and informed decisions.
READING LIST
THE WATER-ENERGY NEXUS: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Overview and Summary
https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2014/07/f17/Water%20Energy%20Nexus%20Executive%20Summary%20July%202014.pdf
WATER ENERGY NEXUS
California Department of Water Resources
WATER-ENERGY NEXUS: A REVIEW OF METHODS AND TOOLS FOR MACRO-ASSESSMENT
Jiangyu Dai
Abstract
Over the past decade, analyzing issues within the ‘water-energy nexus’ has become a topic of increasing attention for the scientific and policy communities. Based on an extensive survey of recent scientific literature on the water-energy nexus, 70 studies were identified and 35 were selected as comprehensive case studies for review. The reviewed studies were classified and assessed according to groupings based on both geographic scale and their ‘nexus scope’. In addition to providing a depository summary of a wide range of current existing methods and tools for water-energy nexus analysis, the paper discusses these approaches based on their main purposes. From this review, it is clear that the research on water-energy nexus has seen a significant increase in both the number of studies and the capacity of the scientific community to productively assess water and energy interlinkages at a higher resolution. At the same time, this review has also concluded that, while many studies aim to develop new methods and frameworks to comprehensively assess interactions between water, energy and other elements, none can or do provide a singular framework for performing a “nexus study”. Furthermore, many researches are at the “understanding” stage with an emphasis on the quantitative analysis of the water-energy nexus. Fewer approaches are designed to support governance and implementation of technical solutions, and this is considered to a priority challenge area for the scientific community if it aims to achieve greater impact on resource policy and management. There is a clear need to improve our ability to classify and compare the capacities, strengths and weaknesses between existing approaches. This would better enable a wider group of stakeholders to utilize existing knowledge to improve their effective management of water and energy resources. It could also help focus the scientific community to more effectively improve upon the existing knowledge base and to increase focus on “governing” and “implementing” the nexus.
WATER - ENERGY NEXUS
Jerald L. Schnoor
Abstract
Featuring peer-reviewed articles published in 2010 and 2011, this research shows progress on the water–energy nexus—a hotbed of research with global implications for energy and environmental policies. Editor Jerald L. Schnoor comments on selection of these articles in this editorial appearing in the June 15, 2011 issue and on the Water–Energy Nexus virtual issue Web site, http://pubs.acs.org/page/esthag/vi/1. As interest in water and energy resources grows, Environmental Science & Technology encourages continued submission of high-quality and impactful manuscripts.
References
Perrone, D. 2011. "Gaining Perspective on the Water-Energy Nexus at the Community Scale". Environmental Science & Technology. Retrieved from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es103230n
Simpson, G. 2019. "The Development of the Water-Energy-Food Nexus as a Framework for Achieving Resource Security: A Review". Frontiers Environmental Science. Retrieved fromhttps://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fenvs.2019.00008/full
Wu, W. 2020. "The changing nature of the water-energy nexus in urban water supply systems: a critical review of changes and responses". Journal of Water and Climate Change. Retrieved fromhttps://iwaponline.com/jwcc/article/11/4/1095/74698/The-changing-nature-of-the-water-energy-nexus-in
MORE ABOUT ME
Mission & Goals
As a soon-to-be college graduate who majored in Sustainable Built Environments, I have felt passionate and anchored in my pursuit of sustaining and protecting natural resources in whatever way I can to be a part of a generation that creates a better and healthier future for the next one. Traveling has opened my eye to these ideas by forcing me to understand the different dynamics of communities and the very real and diverse challenges they face. Although there seems to be much separating us all, we are all much more similar than we think. My motivation to find better solutions of increasing adaptability to climate change, improve access to clean water and food, and opportunity to good quality, safe housing, has all been a story I have learned from being in different countries and seeking an understanding of what challenges are being faced right now to people who may not be as fortunate as others. The water-energy nexus is the fabric of societies and sometimes the dynamic may not be as efficient in comparison to others. But the goal is that we are continuing to try and bridge those gaps, as well as to adapt our already well-established urban landscapes to consume fewer resources and work in harmony with nature and not against it. Nexus approaches are important to the survival of humankind and everything living and depending on the planet, so it is important to put in our best efforts to collectively solve the problem together.