Water is Energy
Basic information
Project Title
Full project title
Category
Project Description
This project is set to develop the homologated measurement system with which water uses can be compared to other systems in the urban environment. Its aim:
Energy and resource efficiency: large-scale operating costs, in energy units, linked to a system of water accounts based on its associated potential - thermodynamic quality;
Reduction of environmental impact: conservation of basins in good condition, preservation of the environmental services of the hydrological cycle.
Project Region
EU Programme or fund
Description of the project
Summary
Water is Energy is the continuation of the research Water equals Energy carried out as the Final Master's Thesis of the MBArch in the line of Architecture, Energy and Environment, ETSAB, UPC, directed by Albert Cuchí, PhD. The research Water equals energy was based on the scientific literature of the ecological economist José Manuel Naredo, who is credited, in Spain, with the first attempt to relate thermodynamics and water valuation with Las Cuentas del Agua en España (1994). In the research carried out during the Master, a reading of water as a form of energy was provided by means of two parallel and interdependent lines of calculation following Naredo:
(1) Natural capital: In J.M. Naredo's system of accounts, hydraulic power and osmotic power are quantified, as referent units of its altitude, volume and physical quality;
In the script developed, after investigation of the water sources for urban uses and their physical characterisation, the evolution -degradation- of the power in the course of urban uses and processes is measured.
(2) Operating costs: Naredo (2007) clarifies that power is a qualitative measure, which can be associated with another, which is the physical cost, expressible in energy units, of "manufacturing" a volume of water with a certain required quality, from another lower quality, both in altitude and purity, by means of the technical solutions available.
In Water equals energy, after investigating the management of the reference territory and the energy consumption in the various processes of the urban water cycle, the energy intensity is measured in accordance with the current management - and with other possible ones.
Key objectives for sustainability
The first objective of the project is to find and develop the standardised unit of measurement and homologated metering system with which water uses can be compared to other systems in the urban environment, from an exergetic perspective and for the following purposes:
(1) Energy and resource efficiency: large-scale operating costs, in units of energy, accompanied by a system of water accounts based on their associated power;
(2) Reduction of environmental impact: reduction of the demand for water resources, conservation of water basins in good condition, preservation of the environmental services of the hydrological cycle, among others.
Having achieved this first objective, the general objective is to develop the calculation script so that it can operate as a tool for environmental management of water resources within the built environment. The operation of this tool consists in a process of simulation and comparison. The process should be applied to several possible management models for a given territory, depending on its hydromorphological and urban characterisation - up to the scale of the building. The usefulness of this tool, where water is a natural capital and a form of energy, is mainly about:
(1) Finding and designing the most efficient water management model in terms of exergy - natural capital - and system energy, and thus reducing demand and degradation of the resource, reducing emissions associated with energy consumption, and preserving the environmental services of watersheds;
(2) Accurately allocate total costs - natural capital and operating costs - to users in proportion to the resource degradation they cause in the scale of uses of the urban circuit, following the polluter-pays premise.
Key objectives for aesthetics and quality
The data obtained with the use of the proposed tool will allow for a much more precise territorial and urban planning around the issue of water. Corrective management measures can be found or designed, moreover, from the territorial and even building scale: that is, the proposed management models based on the starting data can be characterised by modifications at each of the stages and scales of the water system under study.
The theoretical basis of the research, although now extended, continues to be based on the scientific literature of José Manuel Naredo and his Eco-integrating Approach, where the convergence of thermodynamics understood as an economy of physics, and ecology understood as an economy of nature, make the environment the central object of study, where the water systems, the atmospheric cycle that renews them, the organisms, ecosystems and landscapes linked to it are reasoned.
It is reasoned with the guiding logic that, while the Law of Conservation - the first law of thermodynamics - of matter and energy governs water accounts in quantity, the Law of Entropy - the second law of thermodynamics - governs water accounts in quality.
From the Eco-integrative approach, it is understood that the costs of services, the environment and resources are not distinct sets (and therefore not additive), but overlap: water management must be able to play with these intersections and overlaps in order to design reasonable tools.
The proposed research is therefore essentially a means to develop a water management tool where the Law of Entropy rules. The aesthetic and quality of experiencie values come alive when the results become tangible in the natural landscape within or around the built environment.
Key objectives for inclusion
Sustainable management (UN-WWAP, 2006) involves a degree of flexibility in determining abstraction systems, controlled by equity between generations and a balance between aspects of environmental, social and economic values.
The definition of sustainable water use, according to the Australian Department of Environment and Heritage, is that use which, measured in a temporal planning context, involves acceptable pressure and protects the economic, environmental, social and environmental values that depend on it.
From a view grounded in ecological economics, which seeks to recognise what standard economics regularly ignores; that the Economy is embedded in wider social and biophysical systems (Dodds, 1997). Ecological economics situates economic activity within the biological context and physical systems that sustain life. This discipline studies the metabolism of society and is based on an economic model connected to, and sustained by, a flow of energy, materials, and ecosystem services.
Martínez (2009) considers that the application of exergy analysis in the evaluation of flows and resources on Earth (Exergoecology - Valero, 1998), could become a rigorous tool for the accounting of natural resources in the future. She describes that the economic process needs not only environmental services, but also low entropy material and energy flows; the earth absorbs what society considers residual, and its assimilative capacity is subject to critical loads and limited degradation rates.
Inclusion is understood here as an inherent element of the project's objectives, as it seeks to preserve water and energy resources for both present and future generations.
Innovative character
In 1994, Naredo had already set out to produce the Water Accounts in Spain, the aim of which was to group together the physical and monetary information on the resource in a system that would be useful for its management. The aim was to constitute an information system that links hydrology with the economy. Such a system comprises three interrelated information sub-systems: water quantity accounts, water quality accounts, and water monetary accounts. The WCAs connect the accounts of the operations and economic agents involved in the abstraction, distribution, purification and uses of water. With water as an accounting object, the accounting exercise encompasses all possible states, regardless of whether they are, in their current condition, usable. Here, information on resources, energy, material and economic flows, both in their current and possible management, are closely linked to the territory of reference.
In 2009, Martínez, under the supervision of Javier Uche and Antonio Valerio, developed the doctoral thesis: Exergy Cost Assessment of Water Resources: Physical Hydronomics. In this thesis, Physical Hydronomics is defined as the specific application of Thermodynamics to physically characterise the degradation and correction of water bodies.
Subsequent to these developments, various estimates of the value and exergy profile of water resources have been made. The general intention of these calculations has been, following the objectives of the European Water Framework Directive, to find an evaluation system for the correct allocation of costs to the different users. However, there is no standardised system for water management from an exergy reading - the accuracy of which promises the possibility of major improvements in system efficiency. And this is the development that is promised in the proposed project.
