The Water-Energy-Food Nexus: Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad WEF?

Guy Winter reanimates discussion of the grand challenge facing utilities and global society as strains on energy, water and food resources converge.

Travelling in California last month, I noticed for the first time how the Great Californian Drought has finally begun to etch itself into popular consciousness there- most dramatically emblemised by a series of horrific wildfires in the tinder-dry valleys of the north which forced more than 23,000 people to flee their homes.

Four years in to the drought, every washroom wall bears a reminder to use California’s precious water more wisely – some too homely for inclusion in Utility Week. On a utility scale, municipal water authorities are watching the progress of the Carlsbad Desalination Project nearSan Diego with undisguised fascination. When it finally starts production in 2016, it will be the largest ocean desalination plant in the Western Hemisphere, purifying 50 million gallons of drinking water per day. A no-brainer for many other counties in thirsty California too – or at least it would be, if wasn’t for a projected energy bill of about US$50 million per year. That is a chunk of change by any standards: twice the cost of treating the same volume of wastewater. Which is why toilet-to-tap water recycling may become a reality for many Californians and Nevadans before sea-to-sink.

The point is that desalination is on the front-line of the Water-Energy-Food (WEF) nexus – modern, industrial-scale reverse osmosis and modified osmosis desal technologies mean that you can have as much Water as you have the Energy to desalinate (or to pump from somewhere else- like China’s mammoth South–North Water Transfer Project); you can have as much Energy as you have Water to generate it with; and you can have as much Food as you have the Water to irrigate it with (and Energy to process and transport it). All three determine the quality of life- and challenge the very viability of human existence- in large swathes of the world. Take the Middle East, spiritual home of desal:Saudi Arabiahas to burn 1.5 million barrels of oil every day to desalinate water. That’s a water bill of US$73 million per day- US$26,645,000,000 per year. If Saudi’s water consumption continues to grow at its current rate, by 2040, they will be burning all their oil just to satisfy domestic freshwater consumption. The global energy market would start to look very different indeed.  

All that made me wonder: whatever happened to the WEF here?

It definitely used to be a thing, because in its eagerly-awaited 2011 White Paper, Water for Life, Defra noted: “Electricity producers are licensed to abstract more water from the environment than any other sector, including public water supply” – which is a fantastic statistic (although some of that is for cooling thermal power stations, half of which eventually finds its way back into the water system). Meanwhile, our water industry uses up to three per cent of total energy used in theUK, treating and transporting water and wastewater. Since 2012, we have even had our own WEF poster-child: the 150 million litres per day desalination water at Beckton in eastLondon. It cost Thames Water £250 million to construct, which used to seem like a lot of money- right up until they started building the Thames Tideway Tunnel (that’s the Super-Sewer to you and me): project capital cost, £4.2 billion. There’s another reason why you won’t have heard much about Beckton since the (presumably) salt-free snacks were handed round at the commissioning party: it hasn’t actually been used in drought mitigation, because we haven’t had a drought in theThames region since summer 2012. Of course it has to be operated periodically as part of standard maintenance procedures, but even though it’s billed as a 100% renewable energy facility, it’s still more expensive than treating wastewater (actually about two-thirds more expensive, as it uses brackish water from the Thames estuary rather than high-saline seawater like in Carlsbad, CA).

And I suspect that’s why the WEF hasn’t seemed such a big story here lately: yes, 2015 was the first year in which water crises took the top spot in the World Economic Forum’s Global Risk Report; yes, globally about 1.2 billion people live in areas with chronic water scarcity; and yes, even the U.S. Department of Energy has admitted that water scarcity “is leading to vulnerabilities of the U.S. energy system”. But it’s been just about wet enough here (and no doubt too wet for comfort in some regions of the UK), we haven’t any hosepipe bans in the South East for a while and the nights certainly aren’t lit up by forest fires.

That’s really not the point though: the WEF isn’t about a couple of wet winters, it’s about our long-term future on a drying planet. The Environment Agency, Defra, DECC and the electricity generation sector modelled the electricity sector’s future water demand. The conclusion wasn’t as catchy as Defra’s in Water for Life, but did I guess show a clear direction of travel: “The results show a very uncertain future for water demand but demonstrate an overall trend of increasing total demand”.

The EA noted that DECC has set ambitious UK targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions- and they should get even more ambitious after the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris next month. Nascent Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology looks like the only viable long-term option for fossil fuel power stations, but this could increase their water use significantly, putting additional pressure on water resources. If we do ever follow the US example of substituting high-emission coal for high efficiency shale gas-powered Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) power stations, the fracking process will require localised water availability and new wastewater treatment solutions. In West Texas – which admittedly has a significantly different rainfall pattern from Lancashire andYorkshire-drought has led to furious controversy around water use: they call it “Farmers vs Frackers”. Or as the US Depertment of Energy more guardedly puts it: “Some resources are located in relatively water-scarce regions.” One might add that two of the least water-consumptive (and truly renewable) energy technologies of all- onshore wind and solar- have been battered by UK Government subsidy policy and institutionalised NIMBY-ism, whilst a water-guzzler in EDF’s new 3.2GW, £24.5 billion Hinkley Point C nuclear power station in Somerset is the apple of the Chancellor’s eye.

Enda Hayes and Damian Crilly’s excellent piece The water-energy-food nexus: balancing our (in)securities (environmental SCIENTIST, October 2014) picks out the truly fascinating example of the  SevernRiver Basin. This is a modern WEF hot-spot in the West Country, with an intricate nexus between Water for domestic consumption and intensifying agricultural activity in the region; Energy via thirsty projects like the Severn Barrage, Hinkley Point C and potentially shale gas development; and vital Food for the UK’s rapidly growing population from its fertile fields and fisheries (which are, of course, one food source potentially at risk from tidal energy projects).

That’s just a thumbnail sketch- the WEF in theSevernBasinis mind-bogglingly interconnected and interdependent, and affects everyone in the region and the widerUKin the most profound ways imaginable. It’s also the perfect illustration of why the WEF is just as big a part of our lives here as it is in California (and don’t even get me started on the huge, muddy water footprint that we all, as UK consumers, stamp on some of the most fragile water systems in the third world). So, like they teach in the schools there now: remember, kids, water is the first ingredient in every hamburger!