As the world’s population and energy demand increase, water and energy are increasingly coming into conflict as resources become strained. Click on the image below to visit the interactive “Where Water Meets Watts” graph by IEEE Spectrum magazine:
After 85 days, BP has finally succeeded in containing the gushing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico waters. After closing valves and vents on the containment cap during a test on Thursday, the well has stayed in place for two full days.
Although this is a very positive sign, both BP and the White House have warned that the containment cap does not represent a permanent fix – there is still much more work to do to seal the well shut for good, and to clean up the hundreds of millions of spilled oil. “We’re encouraged by this development, but this isn’t over,” said the U.S. government’s lead contact in the region, retired Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen.
BP will likely release the flow of oil again, siphoning it up to ships on the surface as it continues to drill a relief well to permanently shut the well with mud and cement. The well is expected to be ready in early August.
Investors welcomed news of the containment caps success, sending BP shares higher in trading today. However, since the rig explosion in April nearly $65 billion has been knocked off BP’s market value.
A recent survey confirms that African nations are home to the world’s most vulnerable water supplies, and face substantial risks from climate change and population growth.
British consultancy group Maplecroft crafted a “water security risk index” of 165 nations around the world based on criteria such as access to drinking water, per capita demand and dependence on water from rivers which first travel through other neighboring nations.
The survey showed primarily African and Asian nations had the most vulnerable supplies, with Somalia, Mauritania, Sudan, Niger and Iraq leading the list of “riskiest nations.”
However, poor countries are not the only ones facing increased water risk, noted Anna Moss, an author of the study. Regions of the United States and Australia are also at high risk levels., as are European countries like Bulgaria, Belgium and Spain.
On the other end of the spectrum, the most secure water supplies can be found in Iceland, Norway and New Zealand.
A recent well explosion in Pennsylvania which blew contaminated gas and water 75 ft in the air has renewed awareness, and in some cases anxiety, over the highly productive yet controversial natural gas drilling technique known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
Conventional gas drilling processes use approximately 80,000 gallons of water per well. However, the new method of horizontal drilling combined with “fracking” uses millions of gallons of water that has been laced with a cocktail of sometimes toxic chemicals. These new techniques have opened up gas resources in many previously inaccessible areas, and dramatically increased U.S. natural gas production.
However, environmental pollution concerns have steadily increased in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, across which spans the giant Marcellus Shale formation. New York has already limited drilling in certain areas because of fears of possible groundwater contamination in watershed regions. It is likely that similar regulations will soon be put in place to ensure protection of the environment as fracking drilling expands.
The United Kingdom’s offshore renewable energy capacity could one day generate as much electricity every year as would one billion barrels of oil, according to a recent report from the Offshore Valuation Group.
The Group projects that utilizing just one third of the available wind and tidal resources off the UK coast could eventually transform the nation from a net importer to a net exporter of electricity by 2050. At the same time, deploying these resources would result in a savings of 1.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions and create infrastructure with a positive net present value of £35 billion.
“We have long been saying that the North Sea will become the Saudi Arabia of wind energy,” says Peter Madigan, head of offshore renewables at industry advocacy body RenewableUK.
At first glance, Saudi Arabia may seem an unlikely supporter of renewable energy, considering the vast oil resources under its control. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia is looking to take advantage of its other prolific resource – sunlight – with new solar power projects designed to keep the country competitive as renewables increasingly play a role in the overall energy mix.
Mohammed Y. Al-Qahtani, executive director of petroleum engineering and development at Aramco believes “renewables will have an important place in the total energy equation.” Saudi Arabia is looking to use its substantial solar resources as a substitute for oil to generate power domestically as well as to power desalination plants. Although solar is currently more a more expensive means of power generation than oil or gas, Al-Qahtani expects this will shift over time.
The Kingdom recently invested in one of the world’s largest solar-heated complexes at a school in the northwestern part of the country, and is considering participating in the Desertec Initiative which would transmit electricity from North Africa and Middle Eastern solar power plants to Europe.
Climatic change will increase water stress in many places, the report says
The amount of water used to produce food and goods imported by developed countries is worsening water shortages in the developing world, a report says.
The report, focusing on the UK, says two-thirds of the water used to make UK imports is used outside its borders.
The Engineering the Future alliance of professional engineering bodies says this is unsustainable, given population growth and climate change.
It says countries such as the UK must help poorer nations curb water use.
“We must take account of how our water footprint is impacting on the rest of the world,” said Professor Roger Falconer, director of the Hydro-Environmental Research Centre at Cardiff University and a member of the report’s steering committee.
“If we are to prevent the ‘perfect storm’, urgent action is necessary.”
The term perfect storm was used last year by the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, to describe future shortages of energy, food and water.
Forecasts suggest that when the world’s population soars beyond 8bn in 20 years time, the global demand for food and energy will jump by 50%, with the need for fresh water rising by 30%.
But developing countries are already using significant proportions of their water to grow food and produce goods for consumption in the West, the report says.
“The burgeoning demand from developed countries is putting severe pressure on areas that are already short of water,” said Professor Peter Guthrie, head of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Cambridge University, who chaired the steering group.
“If the water crisis becomes critical, it will pose a serious threat to the UK’s future development because of the impact it would have on our access to vital resources.”
Key to the report is the concept of “embedded water” – the water used to grow food and make things.
Embedded in a pint of beer, for example, is about 130 pints (74 litres) of water – the total amount needed to grow the ingredients and run all the processes that make the pint of beer.
A cup of coffee embeds about 140 litres (246 pints) of water, a cotton T-shirt about 2,000 litres, and a kilogram of steak 15,000 litres.
Using this methodology, UK consumers see only about 3% of the water usage they are responsible for.
The average UK consumer uses about 150 litres per day, the size of a large bath.
Ten times as much is embedded in the British-made goods bought by the average UK consumer; but that represents only about one-third of the total water embedded in all the average consumer’s food and goods, with the remainder coming from imports.
The UK is not unique in this – the same pattern is seen in most developed countries.
The engineering institutions say it means nations such as the UK have a duty to help curb water use in the developing world, where about one billion people already do not have sufficient access to clean drinking water.
UK-funded aid projects should have water conservation as a central tenet, the report recommends, while companies should examine their supply chains and reduce the water used in them.
This could lead to difficult questions being asked, such as whether it is right for the UK to import beans and flowers from water-stressed countries such as Kenya.
While growing crops such as these uses water, selling them brings foreign exchange into poor nations.
In the West, the report suggests, concerns over water could eventually lead to goods carrying a label denoting their embedded water content, in the same way as electrical goods now sport information about their energy consumption.
The Engineering the Future alliance includes the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) and the Chartered Institute of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM).
A veritable environmental catastrophe is developing in the Gulf waters around the Louisiana coastline following a fatal explosion on an offshore BP oil rig.
Last week’s incident left eleven workers missing and presumed dead, and broke open a deep-sea pipe, which is currently leaking an estimated 5,000 barrels a day into the ocean. Coordinated efforts from the U.S. Coast Guard and BP – which as leaser of the rig is responsible for all clean-up costs – have not succeeded in containing the oil slick. Today’s reports indicate that strong winds are pushing the oil towards the shoreline, which is home to a variety of sensitive ecosystems and species that would all be in danger if the oil were to reach land.
The consequences of this major spill could spell disaster for President Obama’s proposal to expand offshore drilling in the United States, which he was offering as a way to encourage bipartisan support for a more far-reaching climate bill. The President has ceased issuing new offshore drilling leases until a deeper investigation into this explosion is conducted.
Carbon dioxide emissions are changing the the chemistry of the world’s oceans at an “unprecedented rate and magnitude.” The current rate of change “exceeds any known to have occurred for at least the past hundreds of thousands of years,” says the National Research Council in a recent report.
Oceans are one of the world’s largest “carbon sinks,” storing about one-third of all CO2 emissions. However, when CO2 is stored in the ocean, it reacts with seawater to form carbonic acid. Unless emissions of carbon dioxide are limited, scientists warn that the ocean will grow more and more acidic. Coral reefs and marine life are especially sensitive to the pH balance of the ocean, and increased acidification could have catastrophic consequences, such as the creation of ocean “dead zones” devoid of sea life.
The National Research Council’s data shows ocean acidity has increased 0.1 points (out of a 14 point pH scale). This data indicates that ocean chemistry has changed more since the Industrial Revolution than at any other point over the last 800,000 years.
Every day, two million tons of waste material is dumped into the world’s rivers and seas, causing extreme damage to ecosystems, coral reefs and fisheries, not to mention human health.
In a new report entitled “Sick Water”, the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) says the vast amount of this pollution means more people now die from contaminated and polluted water than from all types of violence, including wars. Dirty water is also contributing to the increase in oxygen-deprived “dead zones” that do not support ocean life.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary and Executive Director of the UNEP, says “If the world is to thrive, let alone survive on a planet of six billion people heading to over nine billion by 2050, we need to get collectively smarter and more intelligent about how we manage waste including wastewaters.” The UNEP report offers suggestions for addressing water quality and security issues worldwide.
The World Bank needs to do more about global water issues, especially in developing nations, says a new report from the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the internal watchdog of the World Bank.
Global water scarcity is on the rise, with 700 million people in 43 countries facing water stress. However, the IEG says there was “no apparent correlation between a country’s water stress and bank lending for water to that country.” Although close to one third of all World Bank projects since 1997 have involved water, the IEG says much more needs to be done, specifically related to sanitation and water pollution issues, restoring maligned environments and monitoring important water-related data. In response, the World Bank says it will focus on ways to close the water resource gap in vulnerable countries.
GreenBiz.com, 11 February 2010 – Although many consider water to be “free,” its growing scarcity promises to carry a hefty price tag for the world’s businesses and for those who have invested in them.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of large publicly traded companies are failing to adequately manage and disclose the risks they face from water scarcity, an issue that will likely become more acute as the world’s population increases and the future impacts of climate change come to pass, according to new Ceres research.
The nonprofit investor advocacy group released a report today evaluating the corporate water disclosure practices of 100 large companies, while also offering a roadmap for reporting water data in a way that is useful for investors and stakeholders.
“This report makes clear that companies are not providing investors with the information we need to understand risk and opportunities from water scarcity,” Jack Ehnes, CEO of the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), the nation’s second largest public pension fund, said Thursday during a press conference to launch the report.
Many have begun referring to water as the “new carbon” because of its anticipated prominence as an emerging business risk. In response to increasing investor concerns over water, the Carbon Disclosure Project , which solicits greenhouse gas emissions data from companies on behalf of institutional investors, recentlylaunched CDP Water Disclosure , adding to the growing list of impacts companies are being asked to report on. Coincidentally, the first Forest Footprint Disclosure report was released this week, evaluating how global companies are managing their forest impacts.
The new Ceres report found that some of the sectors most vulnerable to water stress were also the most advanced reporters. For example, the mining and beverage industry’s received the highest overall points. As a whole, the homebuilding sector lagged.
The highest sector performers were: Diageo (43/100 points, Beverage), Pinnacle West/Arizona Public Services (38/100 points, Electric Power), Unilever (34/100 points, Food), Xstrata (42/100 points, Mining), BP (35/100 points, Oil & Gas), Toshiba (35/100 points, Semiconductors), Mitsui (33/112 points, Chemicals) and KB Home (15/112 points, Homebuilding).
While most companies are reporting basic water information, such as for overall water use or water scarcity risks, the research showed they have a long way to go. The vast majority fails to disclose water risk or performance data in their financial reports, local-level water data — especially important in the context of their operations in water-stressed regions, or suppliers’ water performance, despite the fact that the majority of many corporate water footprints in found in supply chains.
It should be noted that a company’s lack of disclosure may not be a sign of unpreparedness. “As we read the report, we were pleased we did well,” said Ed Fox, vice president and chief sustainability officer at Pinnacle West, which owns Arizona Public Services, the top-scoring utility. “Most of the information being sought is information we already have but just haven’t reported.”
The risks posed by water scarcity are diverse. The physical risks, for instance, can disrupt business activity, evidenced by the multi-year drought in California, which led farmers to allow more than 100,000 acres of land to go unplanted or be simply abandoned. There are also threats to corporate reputations, where increased competition for water supplies can turn companies and communities against one another, especially in emerging markets where water scarcity issues are more acute.
The regulatory and legal fronts are not immune. As water scarcity becomes more of an issue, municipalities will increasingly move to institute more stringent policies, while companies may be forced to defend themselves in court over their impact on water supplies.
There are however, glimmers of hope. The U.S., for instance, is using less waterthan it did a generation ago. There are also opportunities that are being enjoyed by savvy companies, according to Brooke Barton, lead author of the report. “At the same time,” she said, “companies like Dow and DuPont see competitive advantages to making their products more water efficient.”
This article is reproduced with kind permission of GreenBiz.com.
For daily news and articles visit www.greenbiz.com.
A new report from Frost & Sullivan says the World Bank increased funding for large hydropower projects in 2009. The show of support stemmed from a pan-European agreement to further renewable energy initiatives by taking advantage of hydropower technology.
The World Bank’s investments in many other sectors fell across the board, however hydropower projects drew attention because of the long-term potential of the technology- it is cost effective and carbon-free.
“The European hydropower market has traditionally been viewed as a mature market with few opportunities and five years ago, maybe that perception was not so far off. However, with new opportunities for both new projects and refurbishment work are quickly undermining this perception,” remarked Jonathan Robinson, energy and power systems consultant for Frost & Sullivan.
Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media reports Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology has begun work on a solar-powered desalination plant.
Population and industry demands combined with Saudi Arabia’s arid climate have placed great strain on local water resources. As a result, Saudi Arabia has grown into the world’s largest producer and consumer of desalinated water. Currently, the Kingdom accounts for 18% of desalinated water worldwide.
Because desalination plants are high energy consumers, it could turn out to be quite expensive to power such a plant via solar panels. However, the oil-rich nation has been taking active steps towards alternative energy technologies, and it will be interesting to see how this project develops, says Kanellos.
More than 20 percent of the nation’s water treatment systems have violated key provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act over the last five years, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data.
“This administration has made it clear that clean water is a top priority,” said an E.P.A. spokeswoman, Adora Andy, in response to questions regarding the agency’s drinking water enforcement. The E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, this year announced a wide-ranging overhaul of enforcement of the Clean Water Act, which regulates pollution into waterways.
“The previous eight years provide a perfect example of what happens when political leadership fails to act to protect our health and the environment,” Ms. Andy added.
Water pollution has become a growing concern for some lawmakers as government oversight of polluters has waned. Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, in 2007 asked the E.P.A. for data on Americans’ exposure to some contaminants in drinking water.
The New York Times has compiled and analyzed millions of records from water systems and regulators around the nation, as part of a series of articles about worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.
Climate change impacts will have disastrous effects on the world’s water supplies, according to water experts at the United Nations. In a recent interview with Reuters, Zafar Adeel, the chair of UN-Water, a group which coordinates water-related activities among 26 other U.N. agencies, warned “the main manifestations of rising temperatures… are about water.”
Because water is so essential for every aspect of human and animal life, there are “potential for conflicts” as water resources grow scarce. As temperatures rise, it is likely that up to 250 million people could suffer additional water stress by 2020. Central Asia and Africa are some of the regions most likely to be affected by this stress, and could face increased desertification, flash floods, heat waves as well as increased occurances of water-borne diseases as a result of poor sanitation. Right now, Adeel said, about 2.8 billion people do not have access to basic sanitation.
Adeel is urging for a stronger focus on water issues in the global dialog of climate change, food security and economic recover. ”Water is central to each of these debates, but typically isn’t seen as such.”
Global Fund Exchange founders, Lauralouise Duffy and Anric Blatt first met WBCSD President
Björn Stigson in Sharjah, UAE at the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce in 2009 and have been keen supporters of his organization since. The World Council for Sustainable Development produces some excellent reports like the one below and we would like to encourage you to visit their website at http://www.wbcsd.org/
Land-use activities are a major source and sink of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Curbing deforestation and applying sustainable land-use management practices can reduce GHG emissions, while planting trees and managing forests can help remove GHGs (mainly CO2) from the atmosphere by sequestering them in plants and vegetation.
Examples of cases in the report include: developing new crop varieties that have less environmental impacts and can adapt to climate change, or products that help reduce emissions; using techniques like direct seeding and drip irrigation to reduce water use in dry regions, or keeping soils healthy so they store more carbon; and developing models and tools to find practical ways to reduce impact and prepare for the future.
The various cases demonstrate that t here is no single, globally applicable sustainable management solution for land use. Business is only part of the solution and must work with governments, civil society and others to develop a range of land-use approaches that tackle climate change.
New Delhi, 4 February 2010 – The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) today launched the Vision 2050 report ( 2.6 MB), a study that lays out a pathway leading to a global population of some 9 billion people living well, within the resource limits of the planet by 2050. The report, released at the World CEO Forum in New Delhi, India, was compiled by 29 leading global companies representing 14 industries.
This work results from an 18-month combined effort with CEOs and experts, and dialogues with over 200 companies and external stakeholders in some 20 countries.
The report presents new opportunities for business in a broad range of business segments with the foresight to lead their societies on a sustainable business development agenda. Entitled Vision 2050: The new agenda for business, the report “lays out the challenges, pathway and options that business can use to create an opportunity-rich strategy, both regionally and globally, that will lead to a sustainable world,” said Dr. Mohammad A. Zaidi, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Alcoa, who led the project as one of four co-chairs.
“The world already has the knowledge, science, technologies, skills and financial resources needed to achieve Vision 2050. However, concerted global action in the next decade will be required to bring these capabilities and resources together, putting the world on the path to sustainability,” explained WBCSD President Bjorn Stigson.
The publication outlines a future in which 9 billion people live well, enjoying health, food, shelter, energy, mobility, education and other basics of life. Syngenta CEO, Michael Mack added that “humanity has largely had an exploitative relationship with our planet; we can, and should, aim to make this a symbiotic one.” In the Vision 2050scenario, global society attains this standard of living at a sustainable rate, without further harm to biodiversity, climate and ecosystem services.
The report states that the world already has the resources to achieve Vision 2050,but there is a catch: “The radical changes highlighted in Vision 2050 demand a different perspective from business leaders, requiring them to rethink how they operate to stay on-track for a sustainable future,” added Samuel A. DiPiazza Jr., former CEO and Chairman of PricewaterhouseCoopers. This includes a radical transformation of global markets, governance and infrastructure, and a re-thinking of our ideas of growth and progress.
Vision 2050 spells out the “must haves” – the things that must happen over the coming decade to make a sustainable planetary society possible. These include incorporating the costs of externalities, starting with carbon, ecosystem services and water, into the structure of the marketplace; doubling agricultural output without increasing the amount of land or water used; halting deforestation and increasing yields from planted forests: halving carbon emissions worldwide (based on 2005 levels) by 2050 through a shift to low-carbon energy systems and improved demand-side energy efficiency, and providing universal access to low-carbon mobility.
As part of this transformation, Vision 2050 calls for a new agenda for business: to work with government and society worldwide to transform markets and competition. “Sustainability will become a key driver for all our investment decisions,” added Idar Kreutzer, CEO of Storebrand and another project co-chair. New rules for markets will reframe environmental challenges as economic challenges, driving innovation and competition in the direction of sustainability and away from resource- and energy-intensive production. Rationalizing prices to include such externalities as climate and biodiversity impacts will make corporate environmental efficiency a true competitive advantage across all industries and regions.
Business will lead market change by doing what business does best: forming partnerships, creating efficiencies and competitive advantage, seizing opportunities and meeting customer needs. At the same time, a shift toward sustainability will trigger trillions of dollars in new investments in infrastructure, technology and human services, creating new opportunities for business to thrive and grow. A recent study commissioned for this project with PricewaterhouseCoopers and released today indicates that this investment could reach US$ 3-10 trillion per annum in 2050.
Vision 2050, with its best-case scenario for sustainability and pathways for reaching it, is a tool for thought leadership, a platform for beginning the dialogue that must take place to navigate the challenging years to come. “It is hoped that the Vision 2050 work will be used for many years to come. It is designed to be a platform for companies when deliberating strategies and for dialogue with governments and society about how to realize the sustainable future,” concluded Per Sandberg, Project Director for Vision 2050.
2000-2009 was the warmest decade in historical record, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt says it is “completely unambiguous” that the last ten years have trumped all other others since NASA’s record-keeping began in 1880.
Over the past 30 years, surfaces temperatures have risen on average 0.36°F each decade, but the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s National Climatic Data Center confirms that between 2000 and 2009, average global surface temperatures rose 0.96°F over the 20th century average.
NOAA data shows that global ocean temperatures are rising as well. This past December, ocean temperatures were the second warmest on record, trailing the year 1997. NOAA scientists warn this trend could detrimentally impact marine food chains, and may reduce the ability of oceans to store oxygen, resulting in oxygen-deprived areas known as “dead zones.”
These dead zones lack the ability to support marine life, and currently make up less than 2% of the ocean’s volume. However, if global warming continues unchecked, the amount of dead zones in the earth’s oceans could increase ten-fold over the next century.
A recent survey confirms that African nations are home to the world’s most vulnerable water supplies, and face substantial risks from climate change and population growth.
The United Kingdom’s offshore renewable energy capacity could one day generate as much electricity every year as would one billion barrels of oil, according to a recent report from the Offshore Valuation Group.
At first glance, Saudi Arabia may seem an unlikely supporter of renewable energy, considering the vast oil resources under its control. On the contrary, Saudi Arabia is looking to take advantage of its other prolific resource – sunlight – with new solar power projects designed to keep the country competitive as renewables increasingly play a role in the overall energy mix.
Carbon dioxide emissions are changing the the chemistry of the world’s oceans at an “unprecedented rate and magnitude.” The current rate of change “exceeds any known to have occurred for at least the past hundreds of thousands of years,” says the National Research Council in a recent report.
Every day, two million tons of waste material is dumped into the world’s rivers and seas, causing extreme damage to ecosystems, coral reefs and fisheries, not to mention human health.
The World Bank needs to do more about global water issues, especially in developing nations, says a new report from the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), the internal watchdog of the World Bank.
Michael Kanellos of Greentech Media reports Saudi Arabia’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology has begun work on a solar-powered desalination plant.
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