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This paper describes a prioritization methodology for demand side water efficiency measures. Eight domestic measures are appraised using economical and environmental indicators. Out of these 6 show attractive pay-back periods producing €10.2 million annual savings overall. The paper suggests that by using these measures domestic water consumption could be reduced of 34% by 2020.
Cities are major contributors to global emissions, producers of waste and consumers of resources such as energy, water and food: implementing green development strategies is hence a core challenge of modern city-planning. The attention of research has been focusing on the development of energy efficient, low carbon strategies, yet city decision-makers need truly integrated approaches, as the one proposed by the water-energy-food Nexus. The paper investigates whether it is possible to take one step in this direction by extending existing approaches to energy efficiency strategies to progressively include other priority resources, in particular water.
To test this hypothesis a robust and well accepted methodology was used, the ELCC (Economics of Low Carbon development strategies for Cities) developed by SEI and CCCEP. This has been further extended to include demand side water efficiency strategies for cities. This adapted ELCC framework was applied to the case study of the domestic sector of the city of Bologna (Italy), identifying and prioritizing several efficiency measures. Measures were evaluated through their capital investment, annual values of savings, payback period and reduction in consumption, and then aggregated in different scenarios in order to highlight potential urban investments and to showcase a possible approach to the prioritization of demand side water efficiency measures.
The results show that, with an upfront investment of €17 million, a feasible subset of Bologna’s households could be equipped with five selected cost-effective measures, generating annual savings of €10.2 million and reducing the total domestic water consumption of 34% by 2020 compared to the 2012 initial value. With additional €28.5 million, households could be equipped with more costly appliances reaching an overall water reduction of 37% by 2020. In conclusion, the paper confirms that it is possible to successfully extend current approaches to urban energy efficiency strategies to include demand side water efficiency, adding an important building block to the construction of an integrated Nexus-based approach to green development strategies at the city-level.
Read the article (external link to journal)
Past event / SEI's Diane Archer and Raja Asvanon will be speakers at this international seminar on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of CUSRI.
Journal article / This article proposes key principles to guide a just urban transition and discusses various themes and examples from the perspective of Asian cities.
Project / The BioFloat project tests the concept of floating islands in three lakes in Estonia and Latvia to preserve biodiversity and restore water ecosystems.
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