Integrated Pathways for Meeting Climate Targets and Ensuring Access to Safe Water
Feb 07, 2019
IIASA researchers have led work to develop new pathways showing how the world can develop water and energy infrastructure consistent with both the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6) – Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.
The new analysis is one of the first to develop such global pathways. Meeting the Paris Agreement climate targets, to limit global warming to well below 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels, is vital to avoid catastrophic climate change.
However, the Paris Agreement also demands that mitigation decisions consider impacts on the SDGs. The SDGs, agreed in 2015, have the aim of ending poverty as well as protecting the environment. The SDGs cover a variety of areas, including hunger, energy, equality, education and health, as well as water and energy.
Water and energy goals are interdependent. Energy is vital to water and sanitation provision, for example in water pumping and treatment, while the energy sector is itself a large consumer of water, for example in power plant cooling and fuel processing. Reducing emissions from energy is key to achieving the Paris Agreement, therefore the research, which quantifies the interactions between the Paris Agreement and SDG6, will be useful to policymakers developing strategies for joint implementation.
The research was a collaboration between researchers from IIASA’s Energy, Water, and Transitions to New Technologies research programs and undertaken as part of the Integrated Solutions for Water, Energy and Land (ISWEL) Project. The researchers took a ‘nexus’ or integrated approach, looking at all the different elements within the water, energy and climate goals in an effort to balance the needs of each.
The international team enhanced the MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM integrated assessment model to account for changes in global water use as a result of socioeconomic change and the SDGs, and to link the projections to water availability, and the cost, energy and emissions impacts of future infrastructure systems. The scenario for population and economic growth was taken from the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) to look at different ways the world and society could progress. Policies consistent with the Paris Agreement and SDG6 were also included in the analysis.
Three water sector development scenarios were developed to compare the costs and impacts - Baseline, which as the name suggests, implies ‘business-as-usual’, SDG6-Supply, which incorporates the baseline water use projections but includes the expansion of technologies to mitigate growth in water demand, and SDG6-Efficiency, in which society makes significant progress in reaching sustainable water consumption across all sectors.
The model showed that under a middle-of-the-road human development scenario, around US$1trn per year will be needed to achieve the SDG6 goals by 2030. Incorporating the climate targets consistent with limiting climate change to 1.5C will increase these costs further by 8%. The cost of operating and transforming energy systems increases by 2-9% when the SDG6 goals are added, compared to a baseline situation where the SDG6 targets are not included. This is largely due to the need for energy-intensive water treatment processes and costs from water conservation measures.
“The results of our analysis show that combining clean water and climate policies can increase implementation costs, but these increases are relatively small in comparison to the cost for implementing each policy on its own. Finding and improving synergies between decarbonization and water efficiency is crucial for minimizing joint policy implementation costs and uncertainties”, says Simon Parkinson, a researcher from IIASA and the University of Victoria, who led the study.
For example, water pumping and treatment plants could be operated flexibly to provide important on-demand services to the electricity grid, which supports integration of renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. The researchers say that water and energy planners need to work more closely together to make sure that the development of water and energy systems taps into these and other opportunities and is consistent with the SDGs.
“The results emphasize water conservation across sectors is key to reducing potential trade-offs, particularly in water stressed regions where the SDG6 targets might require use of energy-intensive water technologies, such as wastewater recycling and desalination,” says Yoshihide Wada, deputy director of the Water Program and coauthor on the study.
Keywan Riahi, director of the IIASA Energy Program and study coauthor, says that similar research needs to be extended to other SDGs to understand how climate targets influence broader sustainable development.
“This research demonstrates the important role of integrated assessment models and a nexus approach in finding low-cost global transformation pathways consistent with multiple SDG objectives,” he adds.
More News and Articles
Apr 19, 2024
News
WATCH: Overnight with SAERTEX-LINER H20 in São Paulo
Available through Pipe Core, high-quality liner SAERTEX-LINER H20 performed under pressure in São Paulo, Brazil.
Apr 17, 2024
News
Immersive media provides wastewater experience in Denmark
An immersive media experience (IMX) may not be what most people want when they think about industrial wastewater, but that is exactly what visitors can expect when they visit a new installation in the city of Kalundborg, Denmark.
Apr 15, 2024
News
Spotlight on gender diversity at Pipe Core
Since founding in 2008, Pipe Core’s team has grown across all areas of the business and is now in a position where there are more females than males across the organisation. Research published in Harvard Business Review found that “countries …
Apr 12, 2024
News
New Wave of Startups Scale Innovation to Solve Global Water Challenges
Innovators from Around the World Join Xylem’s 2024 Accelerator Program to Deploy Breakthrough Innovations for Utilities and Industrial Users of Water
Apr 08, 2024
News
Integrated sustainable electricity and clean drinking water systems
Altitude Water and New Use Energy Solutions have partnered to create integrated, mobile solar-plus-water generation systems that produce sustainable electricity and clean drinking water anytime, anywhere.
Apr 05, 2024
News
How to Evaluate Hydraulic Fracture Risk in HDD Design
The design of horizontal directional drill (HDD) installations often requires an evaluation of the potential for hydraulic fracture of the soil layers through which an HDD passes. Evaluating this risk during the design process is an important planning tool to …
Apr 02, 2024
News
Historic Project Linking Rome and Vatican City Uses Advanced Technology and Local Knowledge to Keep Water Flowing
Relocation of Major Sewer Infrastructure Enables Construction of Pedestrian Link for 35 Million Visitors to the 2025 Jubilee
Mar 27, 2024
News
USU Study Looks at Water Main Break Rates in the U.S. and Canada
Report Highlights Correlation Between Material and Diameter
Mar 26, 2024
News
Update BE-21: New Material in Course and Modules on Trenchless Pipe Installation
Online training on the topic of pipeline installation in civil engineering: Trenchless technology for underground drainage construction can be a resource-efficient, environmentally friendly, time-saving, and cost-effective alternative to open cut methods. The UNITRACC e-learning course "Utility Tunnelling" has been enhanced …
Mar 25, 2024
Article
Bacteria as a new weapon in wastewater treatment
In early November, San Diego based startup Aquacycl officially opened its first European office and test center at the Water Campus in Leeuwarden. The Netherlands Foreign Investment Agency (NFIA) and the Investment and Development Agency for the Northern Netherlands (NOM) …
Mar 22, 2024
News
A superior HDD offering
Building on its relationships with leading horizontal directional drilling companies, TRACTO Australia has delivered three new rigs to operator Superior HDD.
Mar 20, 2024
News
New portable water filtration technology could improve access to clean drinking water worldwide
The University of Texas at Austin has developed an injectable water filtration system with the aim to aid the over two billion people worldwide who are without clean drinking water.
Contact
IIASA
Schlossplatz 1
2361 Laxenburg
Austria
Phone:
+43-2236 807 0
Fax:
+43-2236 71313