An Assessment of the Value and Applicability of the Water-Energy Nexus Framework

Abstract:

There have been major advances in the past decade in thinking about the links between water and energy resources, often called the Water-Energy Nexus. While past resource practices addressed these resource issues separately, both the scientific and the policy communities now acknowledge the close connections between them. Substantial work has been done quantifying and analyzing water requirements of both specific energy systems and integrated scenario projections. Less (albeit some) work has been done evaluating and analyzing the energy and greenhouse gas implications of building and operating water systems. But acknowledging and even quantifying these links is not the same as truly integrating them into decisions about water or energy use, changing policies or infrastructure to account for the connections, or actually advancing sustainable resource management. This talk will review the key scientific findings associated with recent work on the “nexus,” including estimates of water requirements for energy systems and energy for water systems, the links with climate change mitigation and adaptation, and examples where work on the nexus has actually produced real change in resource policy.