Water Economics: Demand-Side

This is the final post in a 3-part series by Zach Power, who has served as an intern and contributing blogger at ESG Energy during his senior year at Elon University.

Support for demand reduction strategies can be found in the 2005 California Water Plan, which provides data illustrating the downward trend of per capita water consumption. Over the past four decades, Californian per capita water use has decreased by 50 percent, providing strong evidence for the efficacy of efficiency improvements in urban and agriculture use, water recycling, and groundwater management. At the national level, the launch of the Environmental Protection Agency’s new water conservation program, WaterSense, targets areas such as California and North Carolina for efficiency gains in the same way Energy Star has helped increase national electricity efficiency. The WaterSense insignia indicates that the product in question performs, at minimum, 20 percent more efficiently and could provide federal assistance, in the form of tax breaks etc., to supporters of WaterSense certified products and homes, which can reportedly “save 30,000 gallons per year – enough to supply a year of drinking water for 150 […] neighbors”. Such a steady decline testifies to the impact technology and regulatory standards can have on everyday use.

As our populations continue to grow in number, we will be faced with decisions on how best to use our tax dollars – to focus on increasing our supply of usable water or decreasing the amount required for our daily lives. Governments like California and North Carolina are already thinking about ways to address the problem, but citizens can make their opinions heard too. ESG-Energy finds the support for improved technologies to be convincing, and currently helps homeowners and businesses reduce their consumption of water without affecting behavior by inspecting and verifying homes as WaterSense certified. The goal is for North Carolina to remain ahead of the curve and avoid facing the same severities areas in the west are currently addressing.

Water Economics: Supply and Demand (part 2)

This is the second in a 3-part series written by Elon University’s Zach Power. Part 1 was posted on April 26, 2012.

Historically, Americans have relied on dams to provide a buffer against times of drought and low-access. In doing so, the population was provided a way to capture rain and snowmelt otherwise unused and wasted as runoff. Additionally, hydroelectric power, recreational bodies of water for swimming, fishing and various other activities, cheap subsidized water, and agricultural supplies are all benefits that derive from the existence of dams.

As the enabler of significant growth in America, dams are often linked to economic growth, public health supplements and increased access to water-related leisure activities. However, despite such benefits there is a growing opposition to further damming rivers, as more evidence accumulates providing insight into the ecological damages, fishery endangerment, community disruption, flood and mudslide probabilities, and massive long-term expenses.

The costly economic upkeep of dams is frequently cited as a central concern for damming projects. In the United States between 2005 and 2009, there were 132 dam failures and 434 serious “incidents”. Furthermore, the general deterioration of dams has provided ample fodder for critics. In the decade leading up to 2008, there was a 137 percent increase (from 1,818 to 4,308) of dams identified as susceptible to collapse. Although damming provides many benefits, the long-term upkeep and maintenance, combined with the short-term environmental and social costs, has proved enough for many citizens.

Water Economics: Supply and Demand (part 1)

This is the first in a 3-part series written by Zach Power. Zach graduates from Elon University in May 2012 with a degree in economics. He has been a guest contributor to the ESG Energy blog for the past year.

With a current population of nearly 37 million people distributed among 155,779 square miles of land, California faces a very real set of issues and problems with its water management. The large economy and population growth of the west coast state, combined with large variations in rainfall, likely to be exacerbated from climate change, as well as energy provision and budgetary obstacles further complicate the task of providing citizens with adequate, sustainable water supplies.

A string of studies over the past two decades strongly suggests California has, and will continue to, experience significant changes in its climate. Such a variable climate puts dynamic and flexible water management policies at the forefront of public debate, as changes in landscape and climate patterns, specifically precipitation regimes and the effect of demographic transitions on water consumption influence the most important decisions necessary to accommodate a growing population.

North Carolina faces some of the same prominent water management challenges as California, as the state readies for further population growth and continues to pursue economic expansion. While there are various perspectives, opinions and arguments to be heard, two main paradigms, supply increases and efficiency increases, will likely remain at the heart of the issue.

Gardens in the Sky

Written by ESG Energy blog contributor and Warren Wilson College student Annie Pryor. 

The concept of urban agriculture proposes that we produce food within the built environment. New trends like vertical farming and urban rooftop farming bring new realities to the words local and organic. In his article Cash Crops Under Glass and Upon on the Roof¹, Glenn Rifkin discusses the Lufa Farms’ initiative that transitioned an office rooftop into a “31,000-square-foot-greenhouse.” This former office building produces lots of greens and other vegetables while reducing spoilage, transportation and heating costs.

According to the New York Times, if New York’s unused roofs were converted into greenhouses, “the resulting produce could feed as many as 20 million people in the New York Metropolitan Area.” With a global food crisis on our hands, gardens in the sky may be the most promising sustainable business solution yet. These gardens, aligned with sustainable and organic growing practices, based on a system of local effort and rewards, may very well be equipped to feed multitudes of local people, keep buildings cool and improve a building’s energy efficiency.

Rooftop gardens address key issues about growing organic and local, in addition to issues surrounding sustainable building practices (like greening the built environment) and global warming. Initiatives in all parts of the world are likely to take hold and provide a real and working solution to problems such as food distribution, quality and access.

References

¹ Rifkin, Glenn. “Cash Crops Under Glass and Up on the Roof.” New York Times: 18 May 2011. Online at http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/19/business/smallbusiness/19sbiz.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=urbanagriculture

Sustainable Urbanism and the Living City Block

Written by ESG Energy blog contributor and Warren Wilson College student Annie Pryor. 

Last week, I went to a public lecture in downtown Asheville, which featured a non-profit organization called Living City Block. Chad Riley led the discussion on sustainable urbanism and green building. Riley directly challenged what he called “the common theme of green cities,” which is to build green cities using ‘new land.’ Green cities tend to take ‘unused land’ (forests, grasslands, mountainous terrain, etc.) and create a built space on this ‘new land.’ Riley argued that the most sustainable opportunities actually exist within the already built environment. He noted that nearly 75 percent of the built environment would exist and be in use by 2035. Yet, today, building practices require ‘starting over’ and using more land and resources than are necessary. He argued that nearly 50 percent of resources, globally, go to construction. For Living City Block, that simply seems wasteful.

 In order to address this misuse of environment Riley suggested that we take a look at the Melbourne principles –adopted at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg– which consist of ten criteria that guide sustainable building practices. These include, but are not limited to: providing cities based on sustainability, the recognition of biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and minimization of the ecological footprint. By re-using the buildings we already live in, by seeing the built environment as an opportunity instead of a failure, we can re-construct the way we interact with the world. Re-use of the built environment will aid in protecting the environment and minimize our ecological impact.  Instead of starting over, initiatives like Living City Block hope to directly challenge the way humans interact with the environment by re-using the resources that we’ve already extracted from the environment and putting energy back into our environments, both built and natural.  

Throwing Away Money

Written by ESG Energy blog contributor and Warren Wilson College student Annie Pryor. 

Picture this: blue skies, white clouds, flat cornfields and litter. An occasional beer can appears in the grass next to the country road that runs in front of my house. Every few miles, a white plastic bag clings to a deadened corn stalk. On the weekends, my parents take walks in the Midwestern sunshine, carefully placing all the tin and glass in one of those plastic bags. Granted, the Indiana countryside isn’t littered New Delhi; we don’t see milk cows chowing down on garbage on Main Street, or children playing ankle deep in brown, muddy water with plastic Coke bottles floating by. In the States, we keep it relatively garbage-free. Or at least, bury the disposable waste in the ground and let it marinate for a couple hundred years.

My grandpa would always say, “someday, people are going to be digging through the trash, through the garbage heaps, through the landfills, looking for all the things they threw away: the gold, the tin, the money.” As a little kid, I remember going on garbage runs with Grandpa, always on Saturday mornings. He and my grandmother fixed up old houses and rented them. As the landowners, they made it a point to take the trash out to the dump on Saturdays. Before we went to the landfill, we’d look through the bags. I was always surprised to find coins, even whole green paper bills! How incredible that people were careless enough to throw away their money.

The way we waste in the States is not limited to littering. Look at how quickly our cell phones, iPads, laptops “die,” the number of cars lined up in the junkyard, or simply the number of bags of trash each American household produces in a week. The products we consume, at faster and higher rates than most countries in the world, are built to be thrown away, made to become obsolete, to become garbage. By throwing away valuable materials, by mass-producing useless products, we’re compromising the integrity and potential value of our environment as well as our standard of living. Not only are we wasting energy, we’re wasting resources.

 

 

 

 

Water World: The Rising Importance of Water in Business Operations

Written by ESG Energy blog contributor Zach Power, a student at Elon University

Both big and small companies around the world are actively participating in a variety of initiatives and programs attempting to gauge the environmental impact of doing business. Things like The Carbon Discloser Project and an increase in the prevalence of water accounting and management have allowed many organizations to identify potential risks that result from a reliance on stressed and/or tainted water supplies. A recent report from Verdantix titled The State of Global Corporate Water Strategies was created after “speaking to 100 senior executives in $ 1bn-plus firms from different sectors in 10 countries”, from which 5 commonalities were observed.

Verdantix found that formal water strategies are common amongst most industries. In water-intensive industries, it was found that 90 % of businesses currently have a water strategy, showing a growing trend (“nearly a quarter of firms […] that have had a documented water strategy in place for over a decade”). The numbers are lower in non water-intensive industries, but are still substantial at 60 percent. Additionally, the report found that reporting water use is common amongst firms, with “93 percent of water-intensive firms and 77 percent of non-water intensive firms report[ing] their water data”. These figures are a result of the concerns over population growth, natural depletion, resource overuse and climate change, all of which are believed to aggravate stresses on water supplies. Despite these high percentages, many companies and organizations do not have benchmarks set for their water use. Only 41 percent of companies considered to be in water-intensive industries had specific targets, compared with 21 percent of non water-intensive companies. Tapping into the experience of supply-chain managers and water expertise at many specialized consulting companies can help to generate specific, measurable reduction goals.

 The report also found that efforts to track, curb and plan water consumption were initiated mostly by managers (43% of the time), ahead of directors/department heads (32%). The method most often employed by firms to monitor their usages is water metering, with other popular methods including “water accounting, foot-printing tools and product LCA software”. Action has been swift, with many companies, having already taken some measures to address risk from water consumption, now waiting for their implementation to yield savings.

 With the regulatory framework evolving quickly, the significance of water to the success of businesses is steadily increasing – and organizations are responding.

 Sources:

 http://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2012/02/15/5-ways-leading-companies-dive-water-management

http://www.verdantix.com/index.cfm/papers/Products.Details/product_id/310/the-state-of-global-corporate-water-strategies/-