This is a recording of the keynote speech from the “Resources Roundtable 2013: The Future of Urban Water,” an event hosted by the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative.
Peter Gleick is the President and Co-founder of the Pacific Institute, based in Oakland, CA. His speech was titled “An Audacious Vision for Water in the City of the Future.”
He also periodically writes a column on water issues for the San Francisco Chronicle.
One of the first panel sessions I went to featured a talk by Jeff Harris, of the Alliance to Save Energy.
He covered a lot of ground in defining “net-zero energy,” covering state and federal goals around NZE, detailing many of the appeals of NZE, and then focusing on the potential of NZE communities.
What I found most interesting during his talk was the specific examples of the military’s focus on getting a number of bases to NZE. He noted that there are more than 6 pilot sites targeting ZNE (often used interchangeably with NZE) by 2020. Two of the sites have the additional aggressive goal of being “triple-net-zero,” or net zero energy, water, and waste.
He also mentioned a specific site – Fort Carson – and showed some analysis (I think by the National Renewable Energy Lab, NREL) of what kinds of strategies and systems will be needed to achieve the ZNE goal.
After the session, I found an NREL report online that provides significant detail on the recommendations provided for Fort Carson” “Targeting Net Zero Energy at Fort Carson: Assessment and Recommendations” (link opens a PDF).
(Photo credit: Anna LaRue)
During the holidays, I spent a couple weeks traveling in Cameroon. It is dry season there, and it is especially dry in the northern part of the country. The riverbeds are bone-dry sand.
Water is so precious that every single leaking water meter I saw had a bucket under it to catch the extra drops. The photo above was taken near a main road in the city of Ngaoundéré. While someone else is paying for the water, none of it is wasted.
Image: Wikimedia Commons
In honor of World Water Day March 22, here is a list of online Water Conservation Calculators:
This calculator is less a predictor of actual water usage than a comprehensive look at daily habits that affect water use.
Manufacturer Kohler, has a simple online calculator to estimate your home water usage against the U.S. average
This is a more nuts-and-bolts calculator that will let you plug in your actual water usage (from your water bills) along with home appliance and landscaping details to come up with an overall “water budget”.
A calculator that extends past showering and watering the lawn to detailed information on food consumption by food-type.
Happy World Water Day!
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Image from: WRI EarthTrends
World Resources Institute has a useful and interesting service called EarthTrends Delivered. By signing up for this free service you can explore dozens of data charts and maps online and receive email digests of new data as it is produced by WRI in any of the following:
-Greenhouse Gas Emission Sources and Trends
-U.S. Climate Policy
-Energy and Electricity
-Adapting to Climate Change Impacts
Upon signing up you also get a dashboard to manage your subscriptions, save data, and share data via facebook, email or tweet.
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University of California Santa Barbara students passed a unique “Student Services Renewable Energy Initiative”, voting in a $6 per term fee, even as tuitions in the U.C. system continue to sharply increase. The resulting measure will generate $3.4 million towards campus-wide zero net energy goals.
The future electorate is at work…
Read more about the UCSB initiative here.
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Happy New Year Zero Resource Readers!
Below is a collection of interesting events for the month of January.
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Electric Vehicles + Smart Grid
Dian Grueneich, Former Commissioner, California Public Utilities Commission, Mark Duvall, Director of Electric Transportation and Energy Storage, Electric Power Research Institute and Ted Howes, Partner, IDEO, discuss new technologies and their implications for the future of power generation, while Anthony Eggert, Commissioner, California Energy Commission, Transportation Lead, Diane Wittenberg, Executive Director, California EV Strategic Plan, Diarmuid O’Connell, Vice President of Business Development, Tesla Motors, and Marc Geller, Co-founder, Plug-In America, discuss the future of the electric car in California. At the San Francisco Commonwealth Club, with a networking break between topics.
Thursday, January 13, 9 – 11:30 a.m.
595 Market St., 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA
$45 member, $65 standard, and $15 student tickets
A Look Ahead at California’s Clean Energy Future
Panama Bartholomy from the CEC and Emma Wendt from PG&E discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the new report “California’s Clean Energy Future”, jointly issued by the California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission and the California Environmental Protection Agency, among others.
SPUR Evening Forum, Tuesday January 25, 6p.m.
654 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA
free to SPUR and Association of Environmental Professionals members, $10 general admission
Film, ‘ A Sea Change: Imagine A World Without Fish’
The San Francisco Public library will be hosting two free screenings of ‘A Sea Change’. “The documentary film A Sea Change, broadens the discussion about the dramatic changes we are seeing in the chemistry of the oceans, and conveys the urgent threat those changes pose to our survival, while surveying the steps we can take to reduce the severity of climate change.”
Wednesday, January 26, 6 p.m. and Saturday, January 29 at 2 p.m.
Koret Auditorium, Main Library, 100 Larkin St., San Francisco, CA.
free
“Transforum” with Peter Calthorpe: ‘Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change’
Highly influential urban planner Peter Calthorpe discusses his new book, ‘Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change’.
Thursday, January 27, 6:30 p.m.
Hosted by Transform, and held at the SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA.
$15, rsvp recommended.
“Save Our Caltrain!” Summit
Attend this summit to learn about and discuss the severe fiscal crisis facing Caltrain, an important Bay Area transit agency that lacks its own dedicated funding, and connect with others working to find solutions. Organized by the Friends of Caltrain.
Saturday, January 29, 8:30 a.m. – 2:30 p.m.
Samtrans Auditorium 1250 San Carlos Avenue, San Carlos, CA
free
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Global Temperature Anomaly Map 2000-2009, NASA
(see my previous post for background info on the Cancun Climate Summit)
The Cancun Climate Summit, 16th Conference of the Parties (COP16) wrapped up on Saturday morning. With modest expectations widely held after the last years’ highly anticipated COP15 in Copenhagen failed to come to an accord, in the end the Cancun summit has succeeded in achieving a broad-based consensus and vision, if not a road map on how to get there.
Delegates from 194 countries remained deadlocked over the week of meetings in Cancun until a compromise was dramatically reached on the closing day. The conference did not produce another legally binding framework like 1997’s Kyoto Protocol- the terms of which expire next year- but it puts into place the building blocks for such an agreement to be forged.
Key goals include:
– Industrialized countries are charged with developing low carbon development plans and strategies and assessments to meet them.
– A Green Climate Fund will be established and administered by the United Nations in order to provide financial support to the climate change mitigation goals of developing nations. A total of $30 billion in “fast start” finance from developed nations will be secured up to 2012, with a goal of $100 billion in longterm funds to 2020.
– For the first time, a U.N. document sets the imperative that global temperatures must not rise more than 2 degrees C, based on pre-industrial levels.
– A new “Cancun Adaptation Framework” will become established to help undeveloped nations with the necessary planning and technical support to implement their climate mitigation goals.
The next U.N. Climate Change Summit will take place next winter in Durban, South Africa.
More on the outcome of the COP16 Summit:
U.N. Climate Talks End, The Wall Street Journal
Progress on Climate Fund, but Questions Remain, Mother Jones
The United Nations Framework on Climate Change website
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Image: View into a reverse osmosis desalination plant. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Last week I observed a panel discussion on the benefits and trade-offs of using desalination to augment the state’s water supply that was put on by the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC) at U.C. Berkeley. The discussion, titled “Innovation in Desalination- An Answer to Our Water Woes”, featured commentary by water regulators, water experts, engineers, and others, all grappling with the question of when and if desalination makes sense as a water resource strategy. The takeaway message seemed to be that in California’s complex system of water rights, population, climate and location considerations, desalination emerges as one in a suite of strategies that can be used to meet an area’s water supply needs, but that it should remain at this time, something of a last resort.
Desalination is the process of removing the salt from a sea-water or brackish-water supply in order to make it potable, clean water. In a seasonally dry, coastal state like California that has a major conveyance system in order to get precious water resources from the north to the densely populated and more arid south, desalination might sound like a great idea. However, the technology comes at steep price, both financially and environmentally.
What are those costs? First, there is the financial cost; the USGS estimates that desalinated water can cost up to $1,000 per acre-foot as compared to roughly $200 per acre-foot from typical supplies. It is heavily consumptive in terms of energy use; and sea-water systems can disrupt local ecosystems at intake, as well as pollute them with the concentrated discharge at the end of the process.
Despite all of these hurdles and drawbacks, desalination has already been employed in California at a small scale for many years. Desalination will likely also become a more prominent feature of the state’s water profile as the price of the technology continues to come down. At present however, it makes sense for desalination to take a back seat to conservation, water recycling and consumer education.
Read the Pacific Institute’s report, Desalination: With a Grain of Salt
Desalination in the news:
Monterey desalination plant OKd by state PUC, SF Gate
Californians need water but desalination plants are bogged down, LA Times
KQED’s Forum featured a segment on The Cost and Benefits of Desalination, on October 25, 2010.
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This post is part of our definitions series on “eco-lingo” and technical terms.
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Image: U.S. EPA
“Green roofs”, or roofs that use vegetation to retain stormwater and reduce the ‘heat island effect’ of miles of sun-absorbing rooftops, are more well-known than a related roof-type, the “blue roof”.
Blue roofs use stormwater capture devices rather than vegetation to reduce runoff levels from rooftops. Blue roofs can contribute to sustainable building design and retro-fits in a number of ways. Some blue roofs are designed to temporarily harvest and house stormwater others may divert and infiltrate or slow-release stormwater. Since areas with large amounts of impervious paved surfaces may be subject to flooding, blue roofs can reduce the risk and associated damage and expense of localized flooding.
Blue roofs can also be employed strategically to avoid over-burdening combined sewage systems that are in danger of overflow and discharge into water bodies during storms.
New York City unveiled a new Green Infrastructure Plan in September that will employ blue roofs among its strategies to reduce sewage overage a target 40% by the year 2030.
Read an article on NYC blue roofs, here. A further definition of blue roofs can be found, here.
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What exactly does “sustainability” mean? How about “green”, “eco” or “environmentally friendly”? The truth is that these terms are just vague enough to mean many different things to many different people. With the staggering array of “green” products, ‘lifestyles’ and concepts being promoted by marketers and environmentalists alike (as well as the necessary coining of new terms to match new ideas) our definition series aims to make sense of the rising tide of “eco-lingo” and technical terms.
Zero Resource 
