Water and Energy Security

The Connection: Water and Energy Security

The energy security of the United States [or any other country] is closely linked to the state of its water resources. No longer can water resources be taken for granted if the U.S. is to achieve energy security in the years and decades ahead.

At the same time, U.S. water security cannot be guaranteed without careful attention to related energy issues. The two issues are inextricably linked, as this article will discuss. 

Energy security rests on two principles – using less energy to provide needed services, and having access to technologies that provide a diverse supply of reliable, affordable and environmentally sound energy.

Many forms of energy production depend on the availability of water – e.g., the production of electricity at hydropower sites in which the kinetic energy of falling water is converted to electricity. Thermal power plants, in which fossil, nuclear and biomass fuels are used to heat water to steam to drive turbine-generators, require large quantities of water to cool their exhaust streams. The same is true of geothermal power plants. Water also plays an important role in fossil fuel production via injection into conventional oil wells to increase production, and its use in production of oil from unconventional oil resources such as oil shale and tar sands. In the future, if we move aggressively towards a hydrogen economy, large quantities of water will be required to provide the needed hydrogen via electrolysis.
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In Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) there are few choices for energy generation apart from alternative sources, solar, wind, ocean thermal and wave energy or for air-conditioning, geothermal. Without moving in this direction basic human security can be compromised. Editor.

Summit of the Americas: Four Steps for Energy Security

15 APR 2009 - Delegations from across the Western Hemisphere will descend upon the twin island Caribbean nation of Trinidad & Tobago this week for the fifth Summit of the Americas. A hemispheric agenda on energy figures prominently among the issues they will be addressing.

For months, the summit offered the hope of a new, more positive, approach to coordinated regional energy policy. But the array of financial challenges facing the global economy has since divided the attention of policymakers. Now, prospects for comprehensive dialogue on energy security in the Americas can only be described as diminished.

There is still a chance for the meeting to be relevant, even if scaling back expectations is required. For that to happen, the Summit of the Americas should focus its approach to the hemisphere's energy policy agenda on the following four goals. More >>>

The Peak Oil Crisis: Seize the Moment

Washington - 02 April 2009 - Earlier this week the Obama administration, now the effective owner of the U.S. automobile industry, put Detroit on notice that it has 30-60 days to come up with a believable plan to "restructure" itself or it goes into bankruptcy.

This action makes it a good time to step back and ponder just where America's industrial base is going. With $2 gasoline and some incentives, recession-wracked American consumers seem willing and able to absorb another 8 or 9 million new gasoline and diesel powered cars and trucks this year --- but does this make any sense? The "restructuring" plan seems to be one of trimming overhead, shutting some factories, abrogating labor agreements, and stiffing shareholders, bondholders and debtors to the point where the manufacturers might be able to limp along with a minimal infusion of taxpayer dollars.

This plan might be fine except for one glaring fallacy. In the next few years, oil prices are going up so high that ownership and use of the automobiles and trucks in their present form will be a totally uneconomic proposition. How many of the current flavor of cars and trucks is Detroit going to sell with gasoline at $10 a gallon or higher? More >>>

Making solar cheaper than coal in three years

March 6, 2009 - The day after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Emmanuel Sachs decided that it was time to get back into the solar-energy business.

Starting in the 1970s, the Masssachussetts Institute of Technology mechanical-engineering professor had made significant contributions to solar, including a cell-making technique now used by Evergreen Solar. But once research funding for solar photovoltaics--converting sunlight into electricity--dried up in the 1980s, Sachs diverted into other fields, including 3D printing to help designers quickly build prototypes.

To Sachs, September 11 was a reminder of the perils of an oil-dependent U.S. energy policy. The events that transpired that day were jarring enough to prompt him to restart his solar research. Nearly eight years later, he is chief technical officer at 1366 Technologies, a company formed two years ago to commercialize the work he had done at MIT.

"I first got into solar photovoltaics as an idealistic young person," said Sachs, who is now in his mid-50s and is on leave from MIT for two years. "What really got me in full-time (again) was some of the same but also recognizing that there were a lot of issues at play, including national security...and climate change."

If idealism played a role in starting the Lexington, Mass., company, the business plan is all about cold, hard numbers. The 20-person start-up has an ambitious economic target: to make solar cheaper than coal in three years. More >>>

The Oil Glut of 2009…and Why it Won't Last

• A rude bet on crude prices - $100 before $20,

• Western oil majors feel the political pinch,

• A non-cow dung alternative fuel and plenty more...

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Eric Fry, offering a wild guess about the oil market…

As the price of crude oil continues its death spiral, forward-looking investors have every reason to scratch their heads in amazement. The oil market seems to be pricing in a global economic condition that would be even more dire than a second Great Depression. $35 oil seems to imply that mankind will resume its reliance on ancient energy sources like whale oil, tallow and cow dung.

Maybe so…but we doubt it.

Late last year, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released its World Energy Outlook 2008, which presents a thorough field-by-field analysis of production trends at the world's 800 largest oil fields. This comprehensive study suggests that the oil price is much more likely to rise than fall over the next few years.

The IEA stops short of promoting that "Peak Oil" theory that the planet is running out of hydrocarbons. But the Agency does point out that output from the world's major oil fields is declining much faster than previously believed. More >>>

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Economic Rebound

Thursday, 12 February 2009 10:59 - A few years ago, peak oil was relatively easy to understand. At some point in the future, and estimates varied as to exactly when, oil production was going to start declining due to a combination of geologic and geopolitical factors, prices were going to rise precipitously and a massive civilization-wrenching paradigm shift would start as the world transitioned from oil to other forms of energy.

Those who understood that oil was going to start running out one day spread themselves along a spectrum of just when this unhappy event would happen. Pessimists saw the decline of oil production beginning in 3 to 5 years, optimists said 10, 20 or 30 years, and most of the world's peoples did not have the faintest clue that the oil was ever going to run out. Things were so simple 18 months ago.

In 2007, however, it was revealed that a collection of realtors, appraisers, mortgage brokers, bankers, builders, financiers, insurers, securities raters and assorted others had been making lots of money by selling houses to people who could not afford them and then dumping the tainted mortgages on the world's banking system. When all the dust from these revelations settled, it looked as if many of the world's banks had suffered grievous if not fatal damage and what could turn out to be the greatest economic downturn of modern times had been set loose. So where does oil fit into all this? More >>>

Scientists at UNESCO Forum Call for Action to Halt Rising Acidity in World’s Oceans

2 February 2009: Over 150 leading marine scientists from 26 countries are calling for immediate action by government leaders worldwide to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions so as to avoid widespread and severe damage to marine ecosystems from ocean acidification.
The call was made with the release of the Monaco Declaration on Ocean Acidification, which was developed by participants attending a UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) symposium on “The Ocean in a High-CO2 World,” from 6-9 October 2008, in Monaco.

The Declaration notes that levels of acidity are accelerating and that its negative socio-economic impacts can only be limited by cutting back on the amounts of greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere. James Orr, UN Marine Environment Laboratory, a Monaco-based subsidiary of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), stated that “the chemistry is so fundamental and changes so rapid and severe that impacts on organisms appear unavoidable.” [UNESCO Press Release] [IAEA Marine Environment Laboratory] [Monaco Declaration on Ocean Acidification] [IAEA Press Release]