ETA 2021 Strategic Plan - Flipbook - Page 32
battery precursor materials (Li2CO3 and LiOH).
Technological advancement that integrates
scientific research, engineering innovation,
manufacturing, and process improvement
to extract these elements from existing
conventional resources while enabling the use
of new unconventional sources will improve
economics and the environmental footprint of
extraction processes.
Water and Energy-Use Efficiency
Oil and gas industries are strongly dependent
on water and are sensitive to water waste. The
oil industry uses three barrels of clean water
for every barrel of oil extracted. Eight barrels
of wastewater are created for each barrel of
oil produced, and a considerable amount of
seawater is used for cooling systems and to
maintain pressure in oil reservoirs.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s
Promoting Technology Innovation for Clean and
Safe Water10 report points to a lack of science
and technology innovations in water resources
recovery, green infrastructure, enhanced water
monitoring techniques, infrastructure resilience,
and performance of small water utilities. In
particular, municipal water systems could
benefit from new and better water–energy
technologies and approaches that may already
exist but are not widely deployed.
Systems Modeling and Data Analytics
Because of the interdependencies between
water and energy, it is important to understand
the weaknesses in each network and how
they can affect the other. ETA has established
metrics and measurements of electrical grid
resilience, and that work could be strengthened
by better understanding water system resilience
and how the two interact. Further, ETA’s deep
understanding of how the electricity sector can
design effective rate structures to cover high
fixed costs, assign value to conservation, and
quantify the benefits of avoided overexpansion
of supply all could have cross-application in
the water space. Addressing these challenges
requires complex, data-intensive tools to
understand variability, evaluate potential
response scenarios, and optimize resources.
Tools and models exist to address some of these
drivers independently, but are often too detailed
and computationally intensive to be used in
combination for interdisciplinary decisionmaking.
Leveraging the Water–Energy Nexus to
Support Our Energy Future
The water–energy nexus is pertinent to several
dimensions of the energy landscape. Research
and development must focus on this nexus to
determine how it can support and sustain the
energy transition, perhaps even creating new
dimensions to the nexus in the process. Two
common themes are the needs to match energy
supply with demand and to decarbonize our
energy systems. The future U.S. energy supply
will include large shares of clean, intermittent
electricity generation, both centralized and
distributed. Energy demand overall will grow,
underscoring the need to decarbonize end-use
sectors. Because water serves as an energy
carrier and consumer, with the right scientific
and engineering approaches, it could be a
primary enabler of this transition. Our vision
for water efficiency and management is one
that can facilitate this future, leveraging ETA’s
strengths and historic global leadership in these
fields.
scales. At large scales — both in terms of power
and physical size — controlling large and longdistance water transfers could provide grid
relief. For example, if electricity that would
otherwise be curtailed were used to recharge
groundwater and the water pumped out of
the aquifer at a later time, we could maximize
renewable generation utilization and lower the
energy requirements for groundwater pumping.
At smaller scales, inline microturbines have
shown promise for providing up to 100 kilowatt
electric generation capability, but have yet to be
fully utilized.
This complex science and technology challenge
demands a coordinated and integrated science
and technology approach that leverages basic
science, applied research, and outreach. This
will require ETA’s Energy Sciences Area (ESA)
and Earth and Environmental Sciences Area
(EESA) researchers to collaborate to solve water–
energy problems in new ways. Also, these are
areas for close ETA collaboration with scientists
in the recently DOE funded National Alliance
for Water Innovation (NAWI) consortium Hub,
which is led by Berkeley Lab. This will strengthen
research efforts that will lead to significantly
better desalination and water–energy-efficient
technologies and contribute to their fast
deployment. The Water–Energy Nexus Initiative
will further enhance Berkeley Lab’s traditional
leadership in basic research, together with
core expertise in technology development
and energy analysis in R&D. This crosscutting,
multidisciplinary approach to water–energy
nexus challenges will be used to guide national
and California state investments in water and
energy systems.
Detailed Approach
The Water–Energy Nexus Initiative focuses on
the following R&D targets:
• Greatly increasing the supply of fresh water
from nontraditional water sources via
economically viable advanced treatment
processes
• Boosting water and energy sustainability
through the development of new waterand energy-efficient technologies and
the improvement of existing water- and
energy-efficient technologies
• Extraction of lithium and other valuable
materials from natural and industrial
sources
• Developing cutting-edge data analytics and
models to identify the strategic investments
needed in water and energy resources,
infrastructure, and technology, and to
prioritize the locations and timing of those
investments
Project and programs include:
• Seeding and jump-starting novel and
potentially disruptive desalination
technology concepts and ideas
• Leading and participating in new and
existing federal and state R&D partnerships
• Building and growing strategic
collaborations with the private industrial
sector
This work will be organized in the five focus
areas outlined above.
Water’s ability to serve as both an energy
generation and storage medium has been
leveraged as the basis for pumped hydropower.
However, water has a much larger role to play
in energy storage and electric load matching,
spanning a breadth of physical and energy
10
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2014. Promoting Technology Innovation for Clean and Safe Water. EPA 820-R-14-006.
https://www.wef.org/globalassets/assets-wef/3---resources/topics/a-n/innovation/technical-resources/epainnovationblueprintv2.pdf.
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