ETA 2021 Strategic Plan - Flipbook - Page 62
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.
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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