ETA 2021 Strategic Plan - Flipbook - Page 35
National Alliance
for Water Innovation
Berkeley Lab leads the U.S. Department of
Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy-Water Desalination Hub,
a key Strategic Initiative for the nation as we
move toward a secure water and energy future.
Along with cofounding laboratories
Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee
and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
in Colorado, NAWI brings together a worldclass team of industry and academic partners
to examine the critical technical barriers and
research needed to radically lower the cost and
energy required for desalination.
In addition to the national labs, the research
consortium includes 10 industry partners, 19
leading U.S. research universities, a Research
Advisory Council, an Industry Advisory Council,
and the NAWI Alliance, an open-membership
organization.
Developed in 2019, more than $100 million for
the project comes from DOE with an additional
$34 million in cost-share contributions from
public and private stakeholders. The Hub
also will support DOE’s Water Security Grand
Challenge.
NAWI’s focus is on early-stage research on
desalination and associated water-treatment
technologies to secure affordable and energyefficient water supplies for the United States
from nontraditional water sources. The research
will be guided by an annual roadmapping
process designed to engage stakeholders from
the water-treatment and water-use ecosystem,
and by an annual request-for-proposal process
to solicit research ideas through a competitive,
peer-reviewed evaluation and selection process.
Milestones
SHORT TERM (6 MONTHS–2 YEARS)
• Identify, initiate, and scale-up fundamental materials discovery programs. Better understanding
of the underlying scientific principles and innovation in materials sciences are key for successful
development of energy-efficient water treatment technologies.
• Conduct a life-cycle analysis of urban water delivery systems and industrial oil/gas water–energy
interdependencies. Establishing key areas for water–energy technology advancements and
assessing economic impacts are essential for effective use of R&D resources.
• Establish meaningful collaboration with industry partners. Provide technical assistance to
industry partners to advance and improve existing state-of-the-art water–energy technologies.
• Build partnerships and collect data needed to address key problems in the water–energy space.
MEDIUM TERM (3–5 YEARS)
• Seed one or two novel disruptive technologies in advanced membranes, capacitive deionization,
ion sorption, and/or electric field separations. Move breakthrough discoveries into the
technology development phase.
• Demonstrate an integrated system of ion separation/desalination and renewable energy
generation sources. Demonstrate feasibility and optimization paths for development of fullscale desalination system(s) with significant cost reductions. Deploy models to address these
problems.
LONG TERM (5 YEARS AND BEYOND)
• Demonstrate new methods of desalination at half the cost of the current state-of-the-art
technologies.
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