Camilla Dunham Whitehead, LBNL

Contact: Camilla Dunham Whitehead, 207-228-3573, cdwhitehead@lbl.gov

Role in the Energy-Water Nexus

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) estimates that water utilities will need about $277 billion for infrastructure construction, upgrades, and replacement during the next 20 years (http://www.epa.gov/safewater/needssurvey/pdfs/2003/report_needssurvey_2003.pdf.). In addition, wastewater treatment utilities will need multi-billion dollar infrastructure upgrades and expansions, with much of this investment tied to the volume of water needing treatment. By reducing water consumption through efficiency measures, water and wastewater utilities can delay or reduce infrastructure costs, while reducing environmental impacts.

Research Objectives

To assist utilities to curb growing water consumption and extend current infrastructure capabilities, and to better protect the environment, the USEPA is considering programs to help consumers select more water efficient products. As part of their process of defining an efficiency guidance program, USEPA has looked to product efficiency programs and seeks to build on the successes of other efficiency programs in the US and in other countries.

This project lays the groundwork for a successful national water efficiency product program by developing a baseline analysis of existing data sources for local, regional, and national water consumption and tariffs that include gaps in current data collection efforts and by developing ways to measure the success of the program that include databases, tracking models, and standardized economic analyses.

Approach

The objective of this project is to develop two tools that will support the analysis of impacts from EPA’s WaterSense program. The tools examine voluntary water conservation efforts from two perspectives (1) the building by tracking the shipments of water-saving equipment and (2) the utility by estimating changes in flow volumes. The first tool, a National Water Savings model (NWS) will assess the current and projected water savings from the program. The second will work with a defined set of water and wastewater utilities to analyze changes in flow due to water savings programs.

These tools build upon the groundwork laid over the past 9 months during which LBNL collected existing data for water-using products and local, regional, and national water consumption and tariffs for EPA’s WaterSense program. The current proposal will use these and additional data as inputs into the two analytical tools to help track the progress and measure the success of the program.

Accomplishments

• We have worked with EPA to include water-related questions in the Department of Energy-Energy Information Administration's Commercial and Business Energy Consumption Survey.

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) conducts the nation's premiere surveys on energy consumption within major economic sectors. The surveys are highly detailed, carefully constructed to be statistically representative of the entire population, and are indispensable for
analysis and policy planning. The EIA has collected statistically representative data for residences, commercial establishments, and manufacturing plants for over 20 years through detailed national surveys.
 
Currently, these comprehensive surveys target energy consumption. However, EIA survey managers understand that our nation's water resources are limited and that enhancing their surveys to include water consumption questions will make the surveys even more useful for policy makers. Adding water questions to the existing national surveys offers a relatively inexpensive means for EPA to obtain a meaningful water use and product turnover rate.

• Water Rate Study

LBNL wrote a report reviewing existing rate data. LBNL conducted some preliminary analyses to estimate national and regional average and marginal water rates, and discussed the drivers on regional variations. We reviewed the available literature for quantitative projections of future rates.

• Water Data Overview

LBNL gathered publically available water data and evaluated it for completeness (e.g. national coverage, inclusion of relevant end-uses).

Significance of Findings

In gauging the success of any water efficiency program, data on consumption, price, and product -- both prior to and after the program’s implementation-- are needed to calculate the change in water use, cost, and product purchase tendencies. Establishing a baseline of consumption and price levels by sector for a variety of end-uses and customer classes will assists policy planners to better identify the highest-value products to target in designing their programs.

Publications

Acknowledgements

The work was performed under U.S. Department of Energy Contract DE-AC03-76SF0098.