The Wharton Initiative for Global Environmental Leadership and Suez held the The Resource Revolution of Water Reuse event at the Wharton SF campus today. It was a fantastic day of talks and discussions, and a huge thanks goes out to the always-spectacular Joanne Spigonardo for putting together a combination of sessions that tackled technology, data, policy, science and economics. Also, it was (finally) nice to attend an event where speakers/panelists were not the typical ‘manels’ (all male). Water affects everyone, literally; issues around topics such as access, distribution, demographics and markets need to be discussed in an appropriately representative manner.
Instead of an article, here are some notes that I took that capturing some of the general themes of the day. Feel free to reach out to follow up.
IGEL_SUEZ Water
Eric Gernath, Suez CEO
- Good to see his focus on the supply side of the problem
- Climate, land use, demand, population growth…affecting both quality and quantity
- Problems to persist (see above)
- Discarded H20 is largely lost as a source for re-use. Need to do a better job in reclamation
- Recognition of water as a global issue is crucial
- Investing in water projects is incredibly complex
Charlie Iceland, WRI
- Water Scarcity
- Tenets of WRI program on water risk
- Water stress (demand/supply) > 40 and 80% more prevalent in populated regions
- Satellites to aid in decision making
- shoutout to Bobby Shakleton w Bloomberg Maps
Feljcia Marcus, SWRCB
- California issues
- Big problem….big opportunity
- With all of CA storage, 1/3 is from snowpack
- Recycled water – drought is the game changer
Jeff Kightlinger, Metro Water District of CA
- major supply side issues for Southern California
- They supply >1/2 of water needs for SoCal
- 2 bln gallons day-1
- Geographic diversity of supply was the initial hedge against drought…this has changed
- 1990s – ran out of supply, drought triggered
Technology Panel
- Recognition of Data as an enabler
- cost to do something useful w data down, barrier to entry lower
- lack of experts
- Biggest opportunities (imo) ex-North America
- Lack of liquidity (imo) largest hinderance
- predictions (imo) meaningless
Afternoon – Policy
- no notes on this
Look forward to continuing the discussion with attendees. Great side conversations
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