Kate Zerenner: Texas Clean Air Matters

We’re past the midpoint of the Texas legislative session and the bill filing deadline is behind us. Because the legislature only meets for five months every other year, there’s a lot to accomplish in a short span. Now, as things pick up steam we’ll see which bills move forward and which don’t. A bill needs […]

By Kate Zerrenner, Senior Manager of Energy-Water Initiatives, Environmental Defense Fund, and Dylan Dupre, President and CEO, CalCom Energy Across the country, farmers face unrelenting pressure to conserve both water and energy. From California to Texas, recent droughts and declining groundwater levels require more pumping to provide irrigation water for crops. Pumping water takes energy, as do […]

“I’m sorry I’ve been so out of touch.” Months after Hurricane Harvey, my friend reached out to me to let me know that she has been suffering from depression and nightmares. She and her elderly relative were evacuated out of their flooded home in Houston during the storm, marking their door with a Sharpie the date and […]

The 2018 hurricane season is just around the corner – June 1st, in fact. Initial predictions for this year’s season say we should expect it to be more active than average, which is unwelcome news to a state that is still reeling from Hurricane Harvey. And, while some areas are bracing for more hurricanes before […]

Texans are no stranger to the devastation of hurricanes. I still vividly remember, as a young child in Austin, being scared of Alicia in 1983 – and thankful that we lived at the top of the hill. Alicia caused nearly $2 billion in damages, a record at the time, and the category 3 storm was […]

As an advocate for the air, water, and economic benefits that clean energy provides, I find some of my most challenging – and maybe most rewarding – work is trying to engage climate-skeptic lawmakers at the Texas Capitol in Austin. To facilitate that work, I use lessons I’ve learned from my dad, who lives in […]

When it comes to the history and DNA of a city, new buildings have nothing on century-old ones. Yet the reverse can be said in regard to water and energy efficiency. Older buildings reflect the culture and history of a community, but typically are highly inefficient. Such was the case with the Butler Brothers Building in […]

Resiliency is a hot button word right now. Ten years ago, advocates focused on “adaptation,” or the idea of adapting to the coming effects of climate change. Now the focus is on “resiliency,” the ability to bounce forward – not backward – when something disastrous happens. For El Paso, a city on the border between […]

The 85th Texas Regular Legislative Session has drawn to a close. Now that we’ve had some time to digest what went down (and get some sleep), we can reflect. There is no doubt: This was a very hard Session. Emotions were high and lives were at stake. Each Session ends up having themes or issues […]

With summer just around the corner, I – like many Texans – intend to spend as much time as possible in or near water when it’s scorching outside. But, even though we’ve had a wet winter, I can’t help but think of the terrible drought that plagued Texas for years. Just a few short years […]

We’re entering the home stretch of the 85th Session of the Texas Legislature. Now past the Session’s midway point, legislators and advocates are working hard to ensure their bills cross the finish line. Here’s a look at which water, clean energy, and climate bills have been filed, including those we hope will rise to the […]

In honor of this year’s International Women’s Day we wanted to highlight a clean energy leader in Texas, and we didn’t have to go far from Environmental Defense Fund’s Austin office. Debbie Kimberly is the Vice President for Customer Energy Solutions at Austin Energy (AE), the municipally-owned electric utility for the City of Austin. Her […]

What would a world powered by clean, low-water energy look like? If you visit Israel’s southern region, you don’t have to imagine. In 2011, Arava Power in the southern Israeli desert launched a 4.9 MW solar field (enough to power more than 3,000 U.S. homes). Since then nearly 200 times as much capacity – both […]

By Kate Zerrenner

Kate Zerrenner and Leon Kaye of Triple Pundit tasting desalinated water at Sorek.

There’s an old expression that whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting over. The Legislative Session is upon us again in Texas, and count on water being an issue, as it always is in this drought and flood-prone state.

To start, this Session will see the approval of the 2017 State Water Plan (SWP), which is done in five-year cycles. In the five years since the last plan, Texas has gone from the throes of a devastating drought to historic flooding, which resulted in some reservoirs being full for the first time in 15 years.

Moreover, as more people move to Texas and climate change advances, there will be greater strain on the state’s water supplies. According to the SWP, Texas is already in a tighter situation than it was just five years ago: Surface water and groundwater availability will be 5 percent lower in 2060 compared to predictions in the 2012 plan, and existing water supplies are expected to drop by 11 percent between 2020 and 2070. Where are we supposed to get the water we need?

One place we could look to for ideas is Israel, which relies heavily on desalination – or the process of removing salt from water – to meet its needs. During Session, there will likely be calls to implement and fund desalination projects in Texas, which can help ensure water supplies in the future. But we need to take a page from Israel’s book, and create plans and policies that are thoughtful about reducing the technology’s energy footprint.

Cutting desal costs in Israel

Sixty percent of Israel is desert, and the rest is semiarid. (Texas, in comparison, is about 10 percent desert.) The harsh, dry climate means ensuring water supplies is a top priority, and as a result Israel gets up to 75 percent of its potable water from desalination. To put that into perspective, the entire state of Texas currently produces about 123 million gallons per day with desalination, or roughly 465,606 cubic meters per day. The Sorek Desalination Plant outside Tel Aviv, one of many in the country, alone produces about 624,000 cubic meters per day/ 164 MGD.

Lowering Desalination’s Energy Footprint: Lessons from Israel
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I recently toured the Sorek plant, the largest desal plant in the world, which provides about 20 percent of Israel’s potable water. One of the things that struck me, other than the sheer size, was how energy was a front-and-center concern. Since desal plants need constant power – and a lot of it – energy is by far the most expensive part of running the plant. Groundwater desal is highly energy-intensive, and seawater even more so – power is estimated at about half of seawater desal plants’ entire operating costs.

Kate Zerrenner and Leon Kaye of Triple Pundit standing in a desalination pipe at Sorek.

Three tactics help ease these costs and maintain plant reliability:

• On-site power generation: Two of the other biggest plants in Israel are located next to power plants, which means less energy lost during transmission and distribution, as well as greater reliability. One of those, Hadera, is located near a gas-fired power plant, which requires significantly less water than coal. Israel could further cut desal’s water footprint by installing no-water resources like wind turbines or solar panels on-site, as Texas is trying to do.
• Energy efficiency: Israel is home to the two most energy-efficient desal facilities in the world: Hadera and Sorek, respectively. Sorek looks to reduce its energy consumption at every step of the process, like its energy recovery system, which captures energy from the brine stream that would have otherwise been wasted and uses it to power pumps. Unfortunately, U.S. desal plants tend to be behind the tech curve because the approval process takes so long. With a robust, more streamlined approvals process and newer technology, American plants could maximize efficiency as Israel does.
• Taking advantage of smart pricing: Israel has variable electricity rates, meaning they change depending on the season, day of the week, and time of day. Sorek negotiated a lower electricity rate in exchange for participating in the demand response program – in this case, agreeing to do the most production at night when both electric demand and prices are lower. In fact, Sorek was built to be responsive to peak demand: It can change its operating capacity from 30 to 120-percent production in less than five minutes, in response to the electricity rate. Moreover, by enabling customers to alter their energy-use based on peak demand and pricing, Israel’s entire electric grid benefits from greater stability. Leveraging demand response could help desalination in Texas and other states that deal with drought, like California, be more energy- and water-efficient.

Desal in Texas

So, what does all this mean for Texas? In his recent book, Let There Be Water, Seth M. Siegel writes about how native Texan Lyndon B. Johnson shared former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion’s approach to water. Ben-Gurion saw the promise of desal and LBJ seemed to view the technology as the future for ensuring America’s water supplies, especially in dry areas like his own beloved Texas Hill Country. Today, Texas is home to the largest inland desal facility in the world, the Kay Bailey Hutchison Desalination Plant. 

"Desalination is turning the water issue from a zero-sum game to a win-win."

LBJ may have been the first Texas proponent of desal, but he certainly is not the last. IDE, the company behind Sorek (and the new Carlsbad facility in San Diego), opened an office in Austin a few years ago to look for potential sites in the state. Further, Governor Greg Abbott, recently paid a visit to Sorek, and many legislators who understand the importance of safeguarding water supplies are supportive of desal.

In the SWP 2017, about 2.7 percent of the proposed supply strategies are for desalination. That’s a relatively small percentage, but it translates to a giant energy footprint. When it comes to desal, Texas leaders need to understand that using low-water energy sources like solar and wind is important, energy efficiency is critical, and having smart energy policy that supports a more flexible grid – like Israel’s variable pricing – rounds it out.

As Texas embarks on another round of figuring out how to solve our water woes, we could take a lesson from Israel. The country has figured out how to maximize desalination’s potential, while minimizing its energy footprint. As Uri Ginott of EcoPeace Middle East said, “Desalination is turning the water issue from a zero-sum game to a win-win. Every drop doesn’t have to come at the expense of another.” When we live in a typically dry place that’s only expected to get drier, being comprehensive about our water solutions sets us all up to win.

Editor’s note: Kate was a guest of Vibe Israel, a non-profit organization leading a tour called Vibe Eco Impact in December 2016, which explores sustainability initiatives in Israel.

This post originally appeared on our Energy Exchange blog. 

On a warm December day, I stood in a jojoba field in the Negev Desert in southern Israel and watched water slowly seep up from the ground around the trees. First a tiny spot, then spreading, watering the plants from deep below. This highly efficient system is known as drip irrigation, and I was there […]

There’s an old expression that whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting over. The Legislative Session is upon us again in Texas, and count on water being an issue, as it always is in this drought and flood-prone state. To start, this Session will see the approval of the 2017 State Water Plan […]

Deep in the Israeli desert is an academic institute that is building peace in the region by putting nature at its center. The Arava Institute, in partnership with Ben Gurion University, brings students from Israel, Palestine, Jordan, and around the world to find common ground around environmental problems and build trust – and peace – […]

By Kate Zerrenner

At my household, a new year means a new energy and water-use baseline. By that I mean, every month, I look at how much electricity and water I used in comparison to the same month the previous year – so I can try to be as efficient as possible. But I work in the energy field, and I know that’s not a typical New Year’s tradition. Most people don’t examine the trends of their energy-use or spend much time thinking about how to reduce it.

So, what motivates the “average” person to take action and be more energy-efficient? It depends.

A recent study by the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) looked at the psychology behind individuals’ energy efficiency behavior, and how that information could be used to design more effective programs.

The study came away with some fascinating findings that show electric utilities need to be strategic in the way they create, as well as communicate about, their efficiency programs. Moreover, it led me to believe showing how energy efficiency relates to water – the quality and availability of which many people care about – could help encourage people to be more mindful about their energy use.

Study takeaways

One false assumption often made when designing an efficiency program is, if you give the customer the information and tell them what to do, they will do it. But information alone will not lead people to change their behavior.

Information alone will not lead people to change their behavior.

In order to ensure people actually hear and act on the message, utilities should consider:

• Tailoring messaging: Rather than simply talking about saving energy, the program could emphasize improving air quality or saving money, depending on your audience. For example, the study concludes “conservatives are more likely to respond to messages about ‘wasted energy’ or ‘climate change’ than to messaging about ‘global warming’.” But first, utilities have to learn more about their customers to understand the language that will work best.
• The right messenger: People are social animals, and we are more likely to listen to a message from someone we know and trust. The study found that recruiting trusted leaders from a social network, like a neighborhood or church, would be more effective than having the information come from an outsider.
• Giving feedback: Letting people know their actions are saving energy makes it more likely they will continue to engage in that behavior. Plus, “the more frequently personalized feedback is given, the more effective it tends to be.” Other studies have shown real-time energy-use feedback can result in up to 12 percent household savings.
• Using pledges: A commitment to do something – like promising to turn off all appliances when not in use – makes people “more likely to follow through with their planned actions.”

How water could help make people more energy-efficient
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The energy-water connection

Unless you live near a power plant or in a place with markedly poor air quality, you probably don’t think about how your own energy use can have a direct impact on the environment.

But what if you tied electricity to something more personal, like water?

I live in Austin, and my water comes from the Highland Lakes, a group of manmade reservoirs from the Colorado River just outside the city. I spent every summer as a kid swimming and boating in Lake Travis, part of the Highland group. In the worst year of the Texas drought, the beautiful Lake Travis looked like a mud pit. Businesses and marinas closed because the water no longer made it to what had been the shore. I’ll never forget how that lack of water made me feel, and it still inspires me to use water wisely. 

Every time you turn your lights on, you might as well be turning on the faucet, too. 

Connecting water to power could sway more people into thinking about how they use energy. Traditional power resources – like coal, natural gas, and nuclear – require a significant amount of water to produce energy: It takes an average of 21 gallons of water to produce one kilowatt-hour of electricity. The average American uses about 900 kWh per month – that’s nearly 19,000 gallons of water per person per month just for electricity! So, every time you turn your lights on, you might as well be turning on the faucet, too. If electric utilities made that connection to customers or policymakers, it could make the reality of our energy behavior more tangible.

Energy efficiency is a great way to reduce customers’ bills, save water, and lower pollution. But if utilities want people to take advantage of their energy efficiency programs, the new study from Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions and ACEEE suggests they should consider strategic tactics and messengers when delivering the critical details surrounding efficiency. One way to enhance engagement could be by emphasizing the inextricable link between energy and water, and helping people understand where their water comes from.

How you use electricity in your own home is a personal decision, but having a deeper knowledge of the impacts of those choices could lead to less energy and water waste – and healthier air for us all.

Photo source: iStock/nicolas_

This post originally appeared on our Energy Exchange blog.

By Kate Zerrenner

When you prepare the Thanksgiving meal, do you ask each person to make a dish of their choosing, with no coordination for an overall cohesive meal? Probably not. Most likely, you plan, because you want everything to fit together.

Now imagine a water utility with different departments like water quality, finance, and administration. Most water utilities have high energy costs, so each department needs to manage and reduce its energy use – but typically there’s no plan to synchronize these efforts. With such a piecemeal approach, the utility may get overall energy savings, but it’s not maximizing the potential to meet ambitious efficiency goals or reduce power costs.

Enter the Energy Management Plan (EMP), a tool that sets up an organization-wide strategy for energy use. By creating a coordinated vision, an EMP establishes clear efficiency goals and gives departments the flexibility and direction for meeting them. That’s what this summer’s EDF Climate Corps fellow focused on at Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD), which supplies water to 2 million users in the Fort Worth area. The TRWD fellow found opportunities where an EMP could improve the utility’s energy efficiency and management, leading to potential savings and less wasted water.

Roadmap to savings

Energy is a high cost for water utilities. It takes a lot of electricity to treat and distribute water, on top of fueling the offices and facilities. In many cities, water-related energy costs can be 30 to 40 percent of their total energy bill. With energy efficiency alone, those costs could be lowered by 15 to 30 percent – representing thousands of dollars. Installing low-water clean energy like solar or wind at a water utility could further bring down electricity costs. But these initiatives aren’t going to start themselves.

That’s where an EMP comes in. Basically serving as a road map, an EMP gets all departments working toward the same goal: reducing energy use and costs. It also helps prioritize the most cost-effective projects, such as targeting a high-energy pumping station for equipment upgrades or establishing leak-detection programs to reduce wasted water (and associated wasted energy).

Why Water Utilities Need an Energy Plan – and How Texas is Making Progress
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Further, when water utilities identify high-energy-use pain points in their systems, it could potentially lead to partnerships with electric utilities, which might even help pay for major energy efficiency projects. As opposed to most water utilities, many electric utilities already have energy efficiency programs and funds dedicated to meeting those goals. But if an electric utility has been offering efficiency programs for years, it may have exhausted the low-hanging fruit and need to explore new options, such as efficiency through water conservation. By pairing up, both the water and electric utilities could maximize available efficiency and water conservation funds, helping each side reduce its energy use. California is a pioneer in this type of partnership.

Protecting our water supplies

Improving energy efficiency can not only lower costs and save energy, but save water too. That’s because many of the resources we currently use to make energy – like coal and natural gas – require a significant amount of water. The U.S., for instance, gets nearly 90 percent of its power from fossil fuel-fired and nuclear power, which accounts for nearly half of the country’s total water withdrawals. Therefore, cutting energy use indirectly cuts water use.

With a changing climate, many cities and areas will face increased water stress that could put additional pressure on electric systems. Plus, as the population grows, demand for water and electricity increases. Finding opportunities to protect water supplies – like through energy and water efficiency – will be critical.

Summer study: Texas

TRWD operates more than 150 water facilities, and most of the energy it uses is for moving water from East Texas. The utility is committed to lowering energy costs – currently there are about a dozen different programs aimed at doing so. Our EDF Climate Corps fellow’s main mission this summer was to develop a plan to streamline operations and consolidate TRWD’s energy achievements and goals into a cohesive energy management plan.

The fellow’s recommendations included:

• Utility-wide benchmarking to establish an energy baseline for all relevant departments;
• Creating an Energy Team to do the baseline work and ensure implementation of the energy plan across the utility, including regular plan updates and information sharing with the Board of Directors and all departments; and
• Joining the U.S. Department of Energy’s Better Plants Program to push the utility to aim for evolving energy efficiency standards and to allow them access to enhanced technical resources.

These recommendations can help TRWD improve overall operational and energy efficiency, and they exemplify what EDF Climate Corps does best: find ambitious yet achievable goals to reduce energy use and expand clean energy deployment. Future iterations of an EMP could include increased use of self-generation clean energy (e.g. solar panels) to further reduce TRWD’s energy demand.

In fact, this summer, another EDF Climate Corps’ fellow for San Antonio Water System (SAWS) – San Antonio’s municipally-owned water utility – not only identified energy-efficiency savings for the utility, but also evaluated the feasibility of onsite solar generation, of which SAWS is already a national leader.

No one wants a Thanksgiving meal of only side dishes. But that imbalance is what many water utilities currently are working with: They may have some sort of process to reduce energy use, but lack a comprehensive utility-wide energy agenda. Rolling small or piecemeal programs into a larger EMP could increase operational efficiency, lowering costs while saving water and energy. Texas is a great example of a state with water utilities ready to embrace the rewards of cohesive energy plans, and we look forward to seeing progress over the coming years.

By Kate Zerrenner

By: Kate Zerrenner and Dustin McCartney, Senior Data Analyst, Pecan Street

Have you ever thought about how much water your dryer needs to dry your clothes? (And no, I don’t mean your washing machine.)

Every appliance in your home has a water intensity, or the amount of water needed to make and send the electricity that powers it. On the flip side, all water – like in your faucet, toilet, and irrigation system – has an energy intensity, the amount of electricity needed to treat, distribute, or heat the water. Chances are, you probably haven’t given much consideration to the water intensity of your home energy, or the energy intensity of your water. There hasn’t been any data at the household level – until now.

Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) recently teamed up with Pecan Street, Inc. to examine these combined metrics in a new study. Pecan Street, a research group running the most extensive energy-tracking in U.S. history, analyzed the energy and water costs of a group of Austin homes and their appliances.

By gathering granular data on how much energy and water households use, as well as their associated energy and water intensities, this study reinforces the need for smart technology to help us better understand and manage energy and water. Moreover, in order to safeguard water supplies, the analysis demonstrates the importance of powering our lives with low-water clean energy resources.

How’d they do it?

Pecan Street installed BluCubes (gateways developed in the Pecan Street lab to collect water-use data) in homes that already had the lab’s high-resolution electricity measurement equipment installed. Using data from these two sources, Pecan Street identified large water users, such as air conditioning systems and electric vehicles.

Many of the homes were in Pecan Street’s Mueller neighborhood, one of the world’s largest “living laboratories” for smart grid technology. These homes are more efficient than average and have virtually no lawns (meaning a non-Mueller home’s energy and water use could be significantly higher than the study’s findings).

The average monthly water and energy intensities are shown in the figure below.

 

Smart tech for smart homes

The study’s findings are remarkable and show that energy-water data is essential for empowering customers to make smart behavioral changes that improve multiple bottom lines:

• An inefficient fight against hot and dry summers – Air conditioning is the most water-intensive and irrigation is the most energy-intensive, and the intensity of both spikes dramatically during hot, dry summer months. In fact, climate and weather significantly impact energy and water use: It took 20 times as much water to power ACs during the sunny, hot days of July than in February; and the energy intensity of home irrigation systems more than doubled in the same time period.

• That garage fridge-freezer combo is more than an eye sore – One surprising finding came from the one home in the study with an upright fridge-freezer combo and a wine fridge in the garage. In July, the combined consumption of these two appliances came in second only to air conditioning as the most water-intensive appliance, meaning it surpassed electric vehicle charging and was three times that of any appliance inside the home. In a state like Texas where many homes use garage refrigerators and freezers, that’s a huge water impact. Think back to 2011’s landmark drought, and the massive strain garage refrigerators and freezers were most likely placing on water supplies during the summer. Armed with what we know now, consumers could have been encouraged to change those practices in order to save water.

• Your dryer is a water guzzler – The study found that powering a gas clothes dryer requires as much water as powering a washing machine, and an electric dryer needs significantly more.

In order to efficiently manage our energy and water resources, we have to understand how we are using each, and smart meters – for both electricity and water – can help us get there. This data can enable households, communities, and planners to improve their energy and water demands, and lead to targeted conservation that will get the most bang for a buck.

Clean energy saves water

By illuminating the tie between energy and water, this study also emphasizes the importance of clean energy in the home. Traditional power sources – like coal and natural gas – require significant amounts of water to create energy. That’s why charging your electric vehicle (EV), which may seem like it needs no water, actually has a high water-intensity.

Clean energy resources like solar panels and energy efficiency, on the other hand, require little to no water. In fact, 21 of the 30 homes examined in the Pecan Street study had solar panels, and those homes were able to reduce their water footprint of energy used by approximately 79 percent. By offsetting the water required to make and send electricity to homes, solar can not only reduce your energy bill, but could reduce pressure on local water supplies that would otherwise be needed for generating more traditional power.

With the electrification of transportation, we need to encourage greater use of low-water, clean energy resources for charging.

There’s also EV charging, which remained consistent throughout the year and was often the most water-intensive energy user in the study’s homes. As the integration of more electric vehicles and charging stations is underway, policymakers need to consider the effect that has on our electric demand, and consequently water demand. With the electrification of transportation, we need to encourage greater use of low-water, clean energy resources for charging.

It is important to understand not just straight energy and water use, but how much is embedded in the other. EDF and Pecan Street are helping us take that first step. Many utilities already offer free or low-cost electric smart meters, and more are beginning to offer smart water meters. Further, many electric utilities offer programs to help customers install more clean energy solutions in their homes, including energy efficiency upgrades and solar panels. Policymakers and regulators should continue to increase access to these smart technologies and clean energy resources, so we can have a more comprehensive picture of our energy and water use while protecting our water supplies.