Circle of Blue reports that after four years and 22 different drafts, the U.S. Department of Energy continues to block the release of the National Energy-Water Roadmap, a congressionally mandated research agenda meant to help policy makers better understand the nation’s water-energy choke points and begin developing real world solutions. While the DOE's obstruction appears inexcusable, there is still plenty of information out there to start addressing our water-energy challenges.

According to Circle of Blue:

Michael Hightower, an energy systems analyst at Sandia National Laboratories and a co-author of the report, said the first draft of the study on research needs was delivered to the Energy Department in July 2006. Energy Department reviewers have since called for 22 rewrites, the last of which was delivered in May 2009, Hightower said.

Since then the five-member team that co-authored the study has not had any communication about the report with the two primary reviewers, Samuel F. Baldwin, chief technology officer in the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Nicholas B. Woodward in the DOE Office of Science.

“I don’t know why they are holding up the report,” said Hightower in an interview with Circle of Blue. “I can only conclude we don’t know how to write or they don’t like the report. I think we have done a nice job in collecting the data. Maybe the quality is in question.”

Neither Baldwin nor Woodward responded to email messages from Circle of Blue. Ebony Meeks, an assistant press secretary, offered this explanation by email and did not respond to follow-up questions: “When developing a comprehensive technological road map it is imperative that all the data is thoroughly reviewed for accuracy and concurred upon by the multiple participating programs. We plan to release the road map as soon as possible.”

That Michael Hightower and his team of scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have been blocked from releasing their roadmap is no surprise. At last year’s Water-Energy Sustainability Symposium in Salt Lake City, Hightower gave a presentation about Sandia’s water- energy work and the endlessly impending roadmap. Hightower’s frustration was almost palpable when he described his confusion surrounding the report’s hold-up but I for some reason I never got the sense that something was afoul. Then again, I’m also probably naïve.

While Circle of Blue doesn’t provide a conclusive explanation for why the roadmap report was withheld, reporter Keith Schneider does shed some light on the issue:

It is not at all clear why the Energy Department has apparently iced the Road Map. Calls last week to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which played an important role in securing funding for the Road Map, received no response.

But a number of clues are contained in a March 2007 Sandia National Laboratories paper that summarized the Road Map’s contents. The paper, prepared by Hightower and three colleagues—Ron Pate, Chris Cameron, and Wayne Einfeld—makes clear that any number of executives in the coal, nuclear, oil, solar thermal, and biofuels industries, and their allies in Congress, could be unhappy about the report’s conclusions. The Sandia paper essentially asserts that the United States quickly needs to reconsider and realign much of its energy production policy and water management practices in order to avoid dire shortages of water and potential shortfalls in energy. None of the big energy production or large water use sectors will be left untouched, the paper indicates.

The Circle of Blue article goes on to describe many of the concerns and potential water-energy conflicts raised by the Hightower and his Sandia cohorts, including siting water-inensive coal nuclear power plants without considering local water availability, promoting biofuels without regard to their massive water demands and failing to properly address the water implications of carbon capture and sequestration.

While it’s certainly disconcerting that the Obama administration’s Department of Energy continues to suppress the roadmap’s release, there is still plenty of information available to begin developing and advocating for policies, projects and planning approaches that address the critical links – and looming conflicts – between our water and energy resources.

You can still go on to Sandia website and check out their Energy-Water Nexus page where you’ll find all plenty of information describing the Energy-Water Roadmap process mentioned in the article:

Even better, you can also check out roadmap process summary and overview presentations from all of the wrokshops that were held in 2006 to inform the roadmap process. The regional and topical workshops included (follow the links below to download the individual workshop summaries):

• Central Region Workshop
• Eastern Region Workshop
• Western Region Workshop
• Gaps Analysis Workshop
• Technology Innovation Workshop

I’ve actually gone through and browsed some of these summary reports during my research for River Network’s upcoming Water Footprint of Energy report. The level of detail they contain is impressive and there is an awful lot of information to digest. It looks like almost everything collected by Sandia to inform their National Energy-Water Roadmap is more or less available on Sandia’s website in its raw form. While it would be really nice to have a neat and tidy “official” roadmap, there is still loads information available, much of which has already been discussed in conferences and workshops around the country.

One thing that I found especially interesting (perhaps a better word would be suspicious) is that the summary paper referenced in the Circle of Blue article – Overview of Energy-Water Interdependencies and the Emerging Energy Demands on Water Resources (PDF –is no where to be found on the Sandia website. While all of the detailed summaries and information from the energy-water workshops can be easily found, I could not, for the life of me, find the roadmap overview that is now available on the Circle of Blue website.

I agree that it is a travesty - and from the looks of it, without reprieve - for the DOE to be blocking such an important piece research and policy guidance. But even in the roadmap’s absence there is still plenty of work already being done to address the challenges presented by the water-energy interface. Many of the concerns and recommendations described in the workshop summaries are already being echoed by such groups as Western Resources Advocates, Environmental Defense Fund, Nature’s Voice Our Choice, the Webber EnergyGroup, Johnson Foundation, and countless others including, of course, River Network.

While a comprehensive list of potential water-energy conflicts and solutions has the potential to extend ad infinitum – since such a list would have to consider power plant siting, cooling technologies, biofuels, wind, solar and other renewables, fossil fuel extraction, regional growth in energy demand, climate impacts on regional water availability, federal, state and local policies barriers, and on and on – you can pretty much sum up the needed prescription to our water-energy woes in just five words: integrated water and energy management.

As the Circle of Blue article sums up:

Of all the research and policy recommendations summarized in the Sandia paper, and repeated in the Road Map report, perhaps the most significant is the call for linking energy policy and production with water supply and use. The Sandia paper concluded, “As these two resources see increasing demand and growing limitations on supply, energy and water must be recognized as highly interdependent critical resources that need to be managed together in a more integrated way to provide reliable energy and water supplies and sustain future national growth and economic development while maintaining the health of ecosystems and the environment.”

“We need to come up with strategies so we have a sustainable future,” said Hightower. “As it is now in the United States, water is managed by the water group and energy is managed by energy companies. We’ve got to look at the energy infrastructure and the water infrastructure together.

“That’s what we’ve identified as a need in the Road Map report. Hopefully we’ve done something good for the country. Although we’re in trouble with the DOE.”