Today is World Water Day, an international observance of water’s importance. This year’s theme is “Water and Jobs,” bringing awareness to the fact that nearly half of all workers on Earth (about 1.5 billion people) work in water-related jobs, and virtually all jobs depend on water in some way.
In conjunction with 2016 World Water Day, the nation’s capital is hosting the White House Water Summit. The President has called on organizations from around the country to voluntarily take new, specific, and measurable steps to address key water issues, such as drought or flooding, water availability, water-use efficiency, and water security. EDF heeded that call and made the following commitment:
Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is announcing a partnership with Pecan Street, Inc. to gather data and conduct analysis to help 50 households in Houston and Austin understand the connection between their water and energy use. Results of this analysis will help Houston and Austin reduce the water and energy footprint of the more than 3 million utility customers in the two cities. In addition, EDF will work with the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at San Antonio, and the University of California, Davis to help water providers of three to five major Texas cities better manage the energy use embedded in their water systems, with an additional one or two states to be announced later this year.
The work laid out here addresses the issue of embedded energy in water systems, or, in other words, the electricity it takes to secure, deliver, treat, distribute, and heat water. (This is part of what’s known as the “energy-water nexus”.) Read More
