cfrw.us Blog

WATER, ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE

This is the first in a series of River Network papers exploring the nexus of water, energy and climate change issues. Subsequent papers will explore the broad topics presented here, and others, in greater detail. Each paper will include a list of references for further information.

Climate change is arguably the most important issue of our time. The ways we currently produce and use energy are driving climate change that is far faster and greater than any in the history of the human race. These changes will have profound environmental, social and economic consequences in the decades immediately ahead, when the average global temperature is expected in rise by several degrees, and seasonal extremes are expected to rise by more still. Few living systems will be unaffected.

Climate change will place enormous new stresses on freshwater systems. Those that already suffer from pollution, physical degradation and/or overuse will be less able to endure the new stresses than those that are already clean and healthy. Consequently, the work of river and watershed protection groups is now more important and urgent than ever.

However, there is a new dimension to our work today. By helping make the link between water conservation, energy efficiency and climate change, we can play a major role in minimizing climate change itself.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions: An urgent global imperative
Almost all climate models predict significant warming in the coming century. However, the range of the predicted change varies three- to four-fold, depending on assumptions about how quickly and substantially we reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The current general scientific consensus is that if we continue on our present course we will see average global temperatures increase between five and nine degrees Fahrenheit in the next 50-100 years. This is more than enough to have calamitous, completely unacceptable consequences in every part of the globe. Difficult-to-predict feedback loops, such as changes in ocean circulation and releases of methane from melting permafrost, could increase average temperatures even more.

A change of 2-3 degrees is considered virtually inevitable at this point because of the momentum of change resulting from greenhouse gases already emitted. While this amount of change would still have profound consequences, they would pale in comparison to those that would be experienced at the higher range. Clearly, we must do everything in our power to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as drastically and quickly as possible.

How much must we reduce them? According to Tim Flannery, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, we must reduce them by 70% or more over the next fifty years, with much of that reduction coming in the next decade, in order to preserve a reasonable chance of limiting the change to 2-3 degrees and stabilizing the climate at a new, higher level by 2100. Since world population is expected to grow by 50% in the next few decades, we must reduce our per capita greenhouse gas emissions by 90% or more during that same time. We must fundamentally change the way we produce and use energy on this planet. And we must begin with very significant changes in this decade. Every year of delay will condemn us to a less healthy, less secure and less prosperous future.

Water efficiency: An underappreciated path to quick, significant energy savings
Serious work is underway on many fronts to develop new, cleaner sources of energy. However, it will be years or decades before many of them are fully available. The quickest, cheapest, safest energy is that obtained through conservation and efficiency. Once these savings are obtained, they are permanent. By reducing the amount of projected per capita energy use, they widen the number of new alternatives that can meet that use. Wind, solar and other clean sources can meet most or all of our long-term needs if we reduce our long-term per capita use.

Some of the largest, quickest energy savings can come from water savings. It takes a great deal of energy to develop, deliver, treat, pump, heat, and cool water for municipal, agricultural, commercial and industrial use. It takes a great deal more to deliver and treat wastewater before it is disposed. California water and wastewater agencies alone currently spend $500 million per year in energy costs. In the United States, municipal water and wastewater systems use 75 billion kilowatt hours – 3% of total U.S. consumption of electricity, and as much as the entire energy-intensive pulp and paper and petroleum sectors combined. And this doesn’t even begin to count the energy used in homes, on farms and in businesses and industries to pump, heat, cool and treat water and wastewater. 20-30% of the energy use of a typical household is water-related. For many businesses and industries, the figure is higher still.

Every time we use a little less water, we save water and energy. By adopting measures and programs already proven to work quickly and reliably in various parts of the United States, nearly every household, business, industry and community could slash its water use and associated energy use by 20-40% or more in the next 5-10 years. There are numerous easy, proven, cost-effective water conservation and efficiency programs that completely pay for themselves in years or even months. They are the lowest-hanging fruit we can pick as we take the first, crucial steps in this decade to reduce per capita energy use. Furthermore, saving this water will keep more water in our living freshwater systems, making them more resilient to the new stresses that climate change will bring.

Longer-term ways to save much more water and energy
While picking this low-hanging fruit is clearly the way to begin, we can and should do much more to save water and energy over the coming years and decades. The next step should be to stop treating stormwater and treated sewage as waste to be thrown away, and start treating them as resources that can be used for many domestic and industrial purposes. The fact is that we only drink a tiny portion of our drinking water. We use most of the rest for jobs that can be done just as well by stormwater and treated sewage. The next big prize in water efficiency is turning this around. This could reduce our per capita drinking water and associated energy use by another 50% or more.

Last but not least, we must begin now to promote patterns of growth and methods of development that use much less water and energy over the long term. Cluster developments with custom-designed wastewater treatment and reuse systems can use far less water and energy than sprawling developments. Well-planned communities can feature parallel distribution systems that make it much easier to reuse stormwater and/or treated wastewater for many indoor and most outdoor uses. Highly efficient homes incorporating today’s best technologies and techniques, already being built in some areas, can save even more water and energy, and save their owners tens of thousands of dollars in avoided water and energy costs over the life of a typical mortgage. Highly efficient school buildings can save school districts hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few years – dollars that can go to better education instead of literally going out the window and down the drain.

*****************

Meeting our generation’s climate challenge will require innovation and action in all sectors. By showing the way to better, more efficient water use, the watershed protection community can play a major role not only in preparing for climate change, but it minimizing it as well.

Other papers in this series will address a wide range of topics, including the range of likely effects of climate change on water resources; low-impact alternatives for meeting the water needs of the future; proven water efficiency programs that homeowners, communities and utilities can adopt quickly; methods for calculating the full costs – including energy costs – of various water infrastructure alternatives; “blue-green” building techniques; integrated water resource management; and more.

References
Note: Subsequent papers in this series will each include references to sources of information, recommendations for further reading, links to case studies, and lists of organizations doing important work in the field in question. With this first paper we provide some of the best sources of information on global warming itself.

Recommended web sites, books and other resources:
 UN: Climate Change
 US EPA: Global Warming
 USGS: Biology
 California: Climate Change
 World Resources Institute Issue Brief Climate Change 2005: Major New Discoveries: Major New Discoveries
 NRDC: Global Warming
 Sierra Nevada Alliance: Sierra Nevada Alliance
 The Weather Makers by Tim Flannery. Atlantic Monthly Press.
 Tim Flannery: The Weather Makers
 Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature and Climate Change” by Elizabeth Kolbert. Bloomsbury Publishing PLC.
 Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions. A project of The Center for Health and the Global Environment, Harvard Medical School. Sponsored by Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme. (Report available online at Climate Change Futures

By Katy Human
The Denver Post

The idea of tinkering with the Earth’s climate – once the domain of wing nuts and science fiction writers – is getting a serious look by researchers.

Faced with global warming, scientists are rethinking ideas like sprinkling reflective dust in the atmosphere to cool Earth.

“It could buy us some time … and we need time,” said Tom Wigley, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo.

Wigley’s analysis of spraying sulfur particles into the atmosphere using airplanes or balloons appeared Friday in the journal Science.

In the past 30 years, scientists have proposed a variety of ways to engineer the climate, most of them dismissed as too costly, too unpredictable, impossible or ineffective:

Deploying a giant space mirror to deflect some of the Sun’s incoming rays.

Sending particles high into the sky to trigger cloud formation, rain or snow.

Injecting ozone-healing chemicals into the atmosphere above Antarctica.

Dropping iron into oceans so tiny sea plants will grow and pull more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the air.

These sorts of ideas are enjoying a resurgence, said John Holdren, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an energy expert at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Climate change is already occurring far faster than most scientists predicted, Holdren said.

“We’ve seen big increases in the size of wildfires, heat waves, storms, floods, drought, summer melting in Greenland, signs of instability in the West Antarctic Ice Sheet…,” he said.

It will take decades to change the world’s energy systems, which are primarily responsible for the greenhouse gases warming the planet, Holdren said.

“Eighty percent of energy, worldwide, is from coal, oil and natural gas,” Holdren said. “You’re not going to change that overnight, so people are saying, ‘What else can we do?’”

Stall. That’s Wigley’s idea.

The NCAR researcher calculates that the dusty equivalent of a volcanic eruption every year or so could counteract warming for a couple of decades – enough time to figure out ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Sulfur aerosols could be dropped into the stratosphere with airplanes or lifted up in balloons, Wigley said, creating hazy white skies that would scatter some of the sun’s radiation.

This could result in a bit more acid rain, Wigley said, and there are potential problems with ozone depletion. High in the atmosphere, ozone protects the planet from damaging ultraviolet rays.

“I don’t advocate directly that we should do this,” Wigley said. “Rather, I’m saying, this is a serious problem and we should think about all the options.”

Russ Monson, a University of Colorado ecologist, said that while the prospects of global warming are scary, ideas like Wigley’s are “more scary.”

“There are so many potential secondary effects,” Monson said.

At some level, more diffuse sunlight could encourage a forest’s growth, he said, but too little sun would kill plants.

Ammonium perfluorooctanoate (APFO) or C8 is an essential processing aid used to make Teflon and numerous other chemicals. The only chemical plant in North America producing C8 is in Fayetteville, North Carolina. The DuPont Chemical Works has been manufacturing C8 in Fayetteville since 2002.

C8 contamination of public water supplies in Ohio and West Virginia and DuPont’s failure to provide timely information to the municipalities, states and the U.S. EPA resulted in a $16 million dollar fine, the largest in EPA history. In addition to the fine DuPont has paid hundreds of millions of dollars to the municipalities to settle law suits where water supplies have been contaminated.

The EPA has labeled C8 a likely human carcinogen that meets 3 of 5 of the EPA’s criteria for identifying cancer-causing substances. The EPA has called on DuPont and the companies that use C8 in their manufacturing processes to voluntarily reduce and eliminate the use of C8 by 2015 as part of a program called the “Global Stewardship Program”.

The DuPont Fayetteville Chemical Works on the bank of the Cape Fear River has produced this chemical in a new”state of the art” plant since 2002. DuPont has reported discharges of C8 to the ground water and to the Cape Fear River. The extent and causes of these accidental discharges are not fully understood.

The North Carolina C8 Working Group has been watching this situation and meeting with NC DENR and EPA officials to assure that these discharges are fully investigated, understood, stopped and mitigated. The potential for contamination of the Cape Fear River and the ground water needs to be monitored and reported to prevent contamination of public water supplies as happened in West Virginia and Ohio.

The levels of C8 in workers at the Fayetteville plant are dramatically higher than the level in the general population and this happened during a fairly short exposure period. This may also be a public health concern because it is not known or understood how this exposure is happening.

Cape Fear River Watch has been a member of the North Carolina C8 Working Group since the Group was formed in response to the information learned about the C8 discharges in the summer of 2005. Learn more about the NC C8 working group on the web at C8 NC .