River Network Delivers Water-Energy Briefing for the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of addressing a crowd of over 100 people who braved inclement weather and snow to hear me talk about the connections between water and energy. The event was organized by the Johnson Foundation and took place at the beautiful Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Wingspread Center in Racine, Wisconsin. Continue reading for a video of the talk.

The Johnson Foundation at Wingspread is a wonderful, 50-year old organization dedicated to serving as a catalyst for innovative solutions to ensuring a healthy environment and healthy communities. Located on 36 acres on the western shore of Lake Michigan, the Johnson Foundation at Wingspread achieves its mission by hosting events that inspire diverse stakeholders and leading thinkers to reach consensus and take action on a range of public policy issues.

Earlier this year, the Johnson Foundation released Charting New Waters: A Call to Action to Address U.S. Freshwater Challenges, a landmark call to action aimed at heading off a national crisis in water quality and supply. River Network was among the diverse coalition of businesses, farmers, environmental NGO’s and government agencies that signed the call to action in September 2010.

The call to action is a culmination of an intensive two-year collaboration exploring solutions for U.S. freshwater challenges. As part of this effort, the Johnson Foundation convened a series of meetings brining together experts to talk about specific facets of our looming water challenges, such as water and climate change or water and agriculture. I had the opportunity to participate in one of these meetings convened in November 2009 to examine reducing conflicts at the water-energy interface.

As a follow up to their call to action, the Johnson Foundation has been organizing a series of nightly briefings in which they invite community members and regional water professionals to attend a talk on one of the topics highlighted in their call to action. I was invited to give a briefing on– you guessed it – the water-energy nexus on the night of December 13th, and despite some pretty treacherous weather, a good showing of folks from Racine, Milwaukee, Madison and other neighboring communities came out to hear the talk.

Lynn Broaddus, the Johnson Foundation’s director of Environment Programs, wrote an excellent blog post summarizing the key points of my talk on the water-energy nexus:

The message boiled down to three simple points and one conclusion. First, climate change is here, and it’s about more than temperature. As we’ve heard repeatedly in recent years, water is the vector through which we will experience climate change – drought, increased storm intensity, increased water use, etc. Bevan told us that of the ten key findings of a 2009 study entitled “Global Climate Change Impacts in the U.S.”, eight of them tie to water.

Secondly, thermoelectric power, which provides 90% of U.S. electricity, is the largest user of water in the country. Though he took us on a deep dive into the numbers, it comes to one simple fact: When you use electricity, you use water. A lot of water. In some situations the water is returned to its source, but it’s altered – small fish are killed, temperatures are raised, quality is impacted. In fact, our energy supply chain has water impacts throughout – water pollution stemming from coal, gas, and oil extraction, water used during fuel processing, energy (and hence, water) to transport the fuel, air pollution that eventually falls back to the ground, polluting our waters, and the list goes on.

And finally, using water uses energy. It takes electricity to purify water, to create the chemicals that keep our water clean, and to pump the water through the system. Once the water is used, more energy is required to pump the water to a treatment facility, to run the treatment facility, to dry the treated sewage, etc. And in the case of hot water, additional energy (as much as 1/3 of our natural gas usage!) is required. If you think about how heavy water is (when was the last time you had to haul a 5-gallon jug of water?), this begins to make sense. Conclusion? If you want to save energy, use less water (especially hot water), and use it closer to its point of origin.

And that’s the beauty of it. By getting smarter about water, we make headway on our energy challenges and begin to bend back the curve of climate change impacts. At the same time, as we make smart choices about energy conservation and convert to wind and solar power, we lessen the load on our nation’s waters.

The Johnson Foundation was an awesome place to give a talk, and thanks to the incredible help of Susie Seidelman, their Environmental Program Associate, my trip went off without a hitch and as far as I could tell the event was a huge success. Here’s a video of my talk, beginning with an introduction from Susie and closing with a round of questions from the audience:

In addition to giving the talk, organizers at the Johnson Foundation also set up a meeting with me and a handful of leaders working on water issues in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes region. The informal meeting was a great opportunity to learn more about the water-energy issues on the Great Lakes (think big power plants with once-through cooling systems) and some of the exciting, innovative programs going on in the region.

I also had the opportunity to sit down with Susan Bence, an environmental reporter for Milwaukee Public Radio, and talk about the water-energy-climate connection. The interview aired December 17th on Milwaukee Public Radio’s Lake Effect show and can be streamed from their website (scroll down to the third segment titled Freshwater Issues at Johnson Foundation). Or you can click here to download the full interview.