How much energy does it take to fill a glass with drinking water? If you take into account the energy to transport the water from its source
through the treatment and distribution process and into your faucet, there’s a lot of embedded energy that goes into that glass of water. And that’s not even getting into any energy used in the wastewater treatment process.
It’s a simple question, but a challenging one to answer. It’s valuable, though, for water utilities to better understand the embedded energy
in their systems so they can reduce costs, improve energy efficiency, and quantify the avoided energy and pollution savings that accrue from water efficiency programs. And it’s all the more important with the exceptional drought spreading across the West.
ACEEE researched this topic in a white paper released last year, Watts
in a Drop of Water: Savings at the Water-Energy Nexus, which gathered data from existing literature on energy savings associated with water savings. Today we’re releasing a new paper, A
Survey of Energy Use in Water Companies, representing the next step in our research. The paper presents data we collected, in collaboration with the National Association of Water Companies (NAWC) , on the energy required to treat and distribute
water. The data was collected through a survey to some of NAWC’s member companies…
To read the white paper, visit: http://aceee.org/white-paper/energy-use-water-companies
To continue reading this blog post, visit:
http://aceee.org/blog/2015/06/continuing-conversation-efficiency
About ACEEE: The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy acts as a catalyst
to advance energy efficiency policies, programs, technologies, investments, and behaviors. For information about ACEEE and its programs, publications, and conferences, visit aceee.org.
