Download Presentation Materials from the 2010 Water-Energy Symposium

This past September, hundreds of water and energy experts descended on Pittsburgh, PA for the Water-Energy Sustainability Symposium, a three day conference with the lofty goal of addressing the country’s future water and energy challenges. In order to help those of you who are on the ground actively working on these issues, presenter materials are now available online, providing what is perhaps the most comprehensive and up-to-date collection of research and case studies currently available on water-energy issues.

The Water-Energy Sustainability Symposium was co-hosted by the Groundwater Protection Council (GWPC) and the U.S. Department of Energy. For the second year in a row, River Network partnered with GWPC to help make this event a success. In fact, River Network’s own Wendy Wilson gave a presentation on reducing the carbon footprint of water in the Water & Power Utilities Saving Water/Energy Resources session that took place Sep. 28.

Download Presentation Materials

To gain access to what looks like well over 100 presentations from a veritable who’s who of scientists, researchers, utility, nonprofit and government representatives sharing their work on water-energy issues, you first need to download the Water-Energy Symposium 2010 Proceedings (PDF). You can also download the materials by clicking on the “2010” link on the GWPC Conference Proceedings page

Once you open up the PDF of the conference proceedings, you can download almost every presentation listed in the agenda by simply clicking on the name of the presenter.

This format works great for finding information on a specific topic since each track/session consists of multiple presentations. For instance, if you’re worried about shale gas development in your watershed, you can take a look at presentations from the Water and Unconventional Natural Gas Production track, which consisted of three different sessions with about six presentations each for a total of nearly 20 different presentations on the topic of unconventional natural gas production (aka hydraulic fracturing). Great presentations from this track include Water Availability and Management in Shale Gas Operations by John A Veil from Argonne National Laboratory and Sustainable Water Supplies for Natural Gas Development by Ken Nichols from CH2M HILL.

The above are just a couple examples of good presentations from the unconventional natural gas sessions, however, there are literally dozens of other great presentations on topics ranging from planning for future water demands to water demands for energy production. Much more specific topics are covered too, such as managed aquifer recharge, ground source heat pumps and technical and policy considerations of CO2 geosequestration.

Another great way to use this resource is to scroll down past the conference proceedings to page 13, where you can browse the list of 191 presentation synopses. This is a great way to find out about new or interesting research on the water-energy nexus, and the people who are involved with the projects. Many of these presentations include contact information so if you are working on a particular issue this could be a great way to connect with relevant experts.

Want more? Don’t forget to take a look at the Water-Energy Sustainability Symposium 2009 materials from last year’s event in Salt Lake City, UT.