A Convergence Of Interests ?

SP at TOD ANZ has an interesting conspiracy hypothesis about the Chinese purchase of Cubbie Station cotton farm and the massive need for water the booming coal seam gas industry has (invoking the ghost of Russ Hinze along the way) - Sinogetically stuffing the basins?.

Pulling a few strands months apart together, is there a link between Paul Sheehans story (below) about how the expansion of Coal Seam Gas production is going to impact water availability for downstream food producers with last years agreement to sell Cubbie station to a Chinese consortium (now completed).

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Energy And Water

The SMH has an article on water and energy - Energy use sucking up a precious resource .

Australia's future growth is predicated on the expectation that China and India will continue to emerge as economic behemoths. But the explosion in energy use on which Australia's current boom is based is accelerating the water debt in both China and India.

The link between energy and water is rarely discussed, yet is of huge consequence. The problem was encapsulated in Steven Solomon's book, Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization (2010). He later updated the dilemma in the Journal of Energy Security:

''Pumping, conveying, and treating water is extremely energy-intensive. Water is very heavy - 20 per cent more than oil - and massive volumes are required to sustain modern society . . . each day every person living in an industrialised nation personally consumes about [US]1000 gallons [3785 litres] embedded in the food we eat . . . ''

Think of that cup of coffee and its 140 litres. Or a single steak, which requires almost 10,000 litres of water to produce.

Solomon continues: ''While the 13-fold increase in energy use in the 20th century is often heralded as the signature factor in the unprecedented prosperity of a world population that has quadrupled to over 6 billion, it has been accompanied and also leveraged by a nine-fold increase in freshwater use . . .

''The largest single water user in the industrialised world is the energy industry. Prodigious amounts are needed to produce nearly every type of electricity and transport fuel across the energy value chain . . .

''But scaling up alternative technologies on a sustainable, massive level faces serious water scarcity hurdles. Getting additional oil out of existing wells through enhanced oil recovery techniques uses 15 to 1000 times more water. Potentially game-changing new coal, gas, and oil shale-based unconventional fuels that are shaking up world oil and gas markets are almost all roughly three to five times more water intensive . . . ''

It may seem counter-intuitive to be discussing water shortages in Australia after two of the wettest years in a century. The dams are high, Queensland and Victoria have had record floods, even the desert inland is awash. Last year was the third-wettest since we began keeping national records in 1900, following the second-wettest year on record. Both years were dominated by La Nina.

It was too much of a good thing. For the previous 10 years Australia suffered a long dry. The soil lost moisture. Thousands of hectares were also cleared for wheat and cotton. For soil conservation, the worst possible event with so much dry topsoil was for a sustained period of torrential rain. The erosion would be fearsome. That is exactly what happened. Today the land looks healthy, but thousands of square kilometres have seen topsoil eroded. We reached peak soil in eastern Australia a long time ago. The slow exhaustion of the soil has been hidden by the use of fertilisers. That is why the major food basket of Australia, the Murray-Darling Basin, is officially listed as ''at risk'' by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation. ...

Insurance Australia Group, which owns NRMA, among other brands, predicts that floods, fires, heatwaves and drought will grow more extreme and Australia will be one of the countries most affected by climate change.

Our great emerging trading partners, China and India, will be no better off, because of water stress.

China's groundwater reserves are already over-exploited, and water tables are dropping. China has a strategic water shortfall. It has almost four times the population of the United States but only the equivalent of one-third of America's water resources.

India is worse off. It depends on the monsoons and flows from the Himalayan glaciers, which are retreating. India must sustain 20 per cent of the world's population with just 4 per cent of the world's freshwater. The strain is showing. In 1980, there were 2 million wells in India. Today there are 23 million. If wells are dug too deep, saltwater seeps into the aquifer causing irreparable damage. This is happening.

The Ganges is polluted and threatened by the loss of flow from the Himalayan glaciers. Water volume on the Indus - a river crucial to both India and Pakistan - is down 30 per cent.

As India's middle-class grows rapidly, its food and energy consumption leads to soaring water consumption. Something will have to give. Wealth or water.

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Move Over, Electricity: Gas and Water Meters Are Getting Smart

Greentech Media has a report on the expansion of smart metering to water and gas - Move Over, Electricity: Gas and Water Meters Are Getting Smart.

For all of the chatter about smart meters, the conversation rarely wanders far from the realm of electricity. But action is starting to heat up in the smart gas meter market, and water isn’t far behind.

Last week, consulting group Capgemini announced it was chosen by Southern California Gas Company (owned by Sempra) to install more than six million smart meters in the next five years, the largest gas-only utility smart meter project in the U.S. SoCalGas’s project is part of a nearly three-fold increase in the penetration of smart gas meters worldwide estimated by Pike Research between 2010 and 2016.

“The gas grid is certainly a different animal,” said David DuCharme, vice president of Utility and Smart Energy Services at Capgemini. “The largest issue is safety and management.”

In Europe, there is already more activity in the gas market; the U.K. government has mandated dual gas and electric smart meters for every home and business by 2020. Italy will install smart meters for all of its commercial gas customers and most residents by 2016.

Yet in the U.S., gas metering has not received as much attention -- or as many federal dollars -- as electric smart metering. However, the challenge of managing gas smart grid data can be less complex than electric meter data management, according to DuCharme. As prices continue to drop for the smart meter market, this will benefit the gas market, as well.

Like their electric brethren, gas utilities have struggled with integrating IT and OT when implementing the new metering systems. Capgemini, which has doubled its accounts in the smart energy space to 40, is finding increasing success with gas utilities. In the case of SoCalGas, about 30 different vendors will provide the meters; Aclara is providing the MDM system.

Water is also on the horizon. “The cost of efficiently managing infrastructure in the gas and water industry is extremely important,” said DuCharme. For those who think the electric grid in the U.S. is aging, the water infrastructure in much of the world is downright elderly. One study from Frost & Sullivan estimates the European smart water meter market will be worth $20 billion by 2020 and will see double-digit growth in the next decade.

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City of Sydney plans recycled water network

Clover Moore's Sydney city council seems to be plotting a slow secession from the electricity and water grids. The SMH has a report on an interesting plan for storing recycled water in local aquifers - City of Sydney plans recycled water network.

THE City of Sydney council is finalising plans for a recycled water network to be established throughout much of the city. It will include use of the Botany aquifer which extends from Redfern and Surry Hills, through Centennial Park and on to Botany Bay.

The rethink of the city's water supply comes as the council finalises plans to decouple the electricity network from the statewide supply grid, instead using a new network of power generators throughout the CBD which will provide cheaper and more reliable power to the city. ''If you're digging up the streets to put in the new trigeneration [electricity, heating and cooling] system, that's the golden opportunity to put in a recycled water network,'' the council's chief development officer for energy and climate change, Mr Allan Jones, said.

''Sixty per cent of the cost of the infrastructure is in the trenching and traffic management. That's why we're also looking at automated waste collection.''

The council recently outlined plans for an automated waste collection system, which remains under study. ''Piping water into the city and only drinking 2 per cent of that is just crackers,'' Mr Jones said. Taking into account cooking, and any possible way of ingesting water, no more than 20 per cent of the city's water needed to be of drinking quality, he said.

Central to the plan will use of recycled water and stormwater at new developments such as Barangaroo and Green Square.
Barangaroo will generate a surplus of recycled water which is expected to be used in water cooling towers and similar structures in other parts of the CBD.

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