Untapped potential

Hi,

Today’s piece is our first contribution from a guest writer in a while. In it, Kyle Rosenthal walks us through the case for much more focus on tech-based actions to accelerate water conservation while illuminating how intersectional (and under-discussed) water is within sustainability conversations. Want to be the next to contribute? Reply with your pitch!

Before we get to that, one quick plug: I’m pleased to announce the soft-launch of a new tool for the Keep Cool ecosystem, namely the ‘Hot Box.’ No, it’s not that one high school acquaintance’s beat-up old sedan in which your classmates prone to subversion and listening to Pink Floyd…well, you know the innuendo. Rather, it’s a simple tool I envisioned and that Brett Cornick—who also built our new site—built. It’s designed as a response to (my own) email and social media fatigue, namely a one-stop shop to see what I’m currently reading or otherwise digesting across the many sustainability worlds. Articles, papers, fun finds from across the internet; it’ll all be housed there, and I’ll update it regularly. In the future, I’ll also welcome people like you for guest curation. Take a look and send me things to feature!

DEEP DIVE

Water use accounts for 2% of energy use and ~45 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. annually. From treatment to delivery (which alone can constitute up to 40% of a municipality’s energy use), freshwater usage and wastewater treatment vary in intensity and requirements by location. Further, as a nod to intersectionality with other challenges (and opportunities), some estimates indicate that up to 22% of freshwater use is attributable to wasted food. Add unfixed leaks to the calculus, and the two (wasted food + leaks) together account for trillions of gallons of wasted water, upwards of 35% of U.S. water usage. Hence, while conserving water—perhaps the foundational natural resource—is worthwhile in and of itself, water conservation also has energy and emissions benefits. And wasted water is a very tractable challenge. Today, unfixed leaks are an area we’ll focus on, though it’ll also serve as a lens to explore lower-hanging fruit infrastructural opportunities to accelerate sustainability in general, especially considering the water shortages accelerating in many places nationwide.

While there are parallels between the water and energy spaces, and the two certainly intersect and overlap, our relationship with water utilities is very different from our relationship with energy utilities. While there are ~3,000 energy utilities (mostly electric, but with a few hundred gas only) in the U.S., with ~300 serving the majority of the population, there are nearly 150,000 water utilities that often operate at a much more local level, are publicly administered, and frequently have far less capacity (both in terms of labor and financially) to proactively address issues ranging from cybersecurity threats to retrofitting potentially toxic lead pipes, managing bacteria, PFAS, and other pollution, let alone boosting energy efficiency in their operations. (Just a year ago, U.S. water utilities were a massive target of cybersecurity threats by foreign actors.) Further, if the AI conversation is your main focus, you’ll appreciate that many of the high-intensity computing applications are known both for hoovering up lots of power and water. Our water system needs attention at all levels, and there are acute opportunities for those working in the built environment to contribute.

Getting personal

In my past work, primarily in healthcare and commercial real estate, I supported numerous water reduction projects, which informed much of the content below. Across the U.S., U.K., and Canada, in formal roles and by way of supporting the company FirstWave Water Solutions—a company focused on driving operational savings and safety benefits through water conservation—I have evaluated water opportunities across portfolios in more than 5,000 commercial buildings.

With a focus on senior living, our biggest obstacle with FirstWave was ensuring residents, asset managers, and other facilities staff understood that the water work we offered was not some “low-flow” fixture program that would simply reduce water pressure. Like other climate solutions, a single negative experience or poor branding from decades ago can hinder the acceptance or consideration of more modern solutions that address multiple problems simultaneously and mitigate past issues – a topic I recently covered in greater depth here.

Suffice it to say, none of our work would have been possible without the proactive engagement of residents and employees, along with their feedback and appropriate adjustments. This ranged from surveys to trained installers who had conversations on the ground and in people’s homes and offices as they were doing the work to understand what worked, what they wanted in terms of aesthetics, and more. In terms of what I helped execute, we paid a lot of attention to leak detection and repair. Not just for operational savings. But for safety, too. Flooding is typically thought of as an external threat to our homes and buildings due to storms. That’s certainly an issue, too, but insurers are quick to point out the distinction between external floods and those caused by internal issues like pipe bursts or overflowing toilets. Quick leak response can also reduce mold and other negative health externalities impacts while mitigating potentially undetected damages, especially in multistory buildings (think multifamily units, which can be vacant for months). Leak detection and repair have a direct, literal correlation with the reduced risk of someone, or a bathtub, falling through a floor.

I once was the person who physically received leak notifications via text, email, call, and app, often at inconvenient times, such as Saturday mornings at around 3 AM. Our communities set up a leak notification system for several reasons. Usually, there were no 24/7 facilities staff on-site to identify or respond to issues. Having someone responsive to notifications allowed for a speedy response, whereas it may not have been detected for hours or even days otherwise. Regular flow monitoring identified anomalies and improved over time to identify leaks more quickly, leveraging past usage data to pinpoint trends at any given moment. Granular detection, like what part of a building a leak is in or even what fixture or appliance caused it, can also decrease workload for facilities staff.

Large-scale replacement of fixtures was one component of our program featuring high-quality designs that also improve the user’s experience. For seniors, this meant handheld showerheads and replacement of toilets with ADA-accessible appliances that are easier to sit on and stand up from. The toilets also utilize a vacuum technology that can consume nearly anything put into them, using very little water and reducing the risk of constant running or overflow. The fifth generation of the Smart Valve, in particular, reduced billed usage as water meters often can’t detect the difference between air bubbles and water passing through the pipes. The Smart Valve compresses these bubbles, ensuring the water meter only detects actual water passing through. This small fix, while not explicitly ‘about’ reducing water use, leads to more accurate billing (assuming you live in a place with a water meter, which is not a guarantee) and can reduce bills up to 15%.

Finally, real-time monitoring of usage and leak detection enabled a more seamless identification of billing errors, allowing leaks to be caught before they escalated out of control, and patterns to be identified surrounding water use in general, such as peak days and times of usage. As with energy, certain conditions can warrant a water reduction notice to be sent out, not necessarily to reduce use, but to avoid additional overburdening of the sewer system. A single commercial building can have a big local impact, ensuring a combined sewer system does not overflow, dumping polluted water into rivers and lakes. Demand response programs aren’t just for energy; they may well emerge for water use down the road, too.

While we intended to save water and costs and make life easier for maintenance staff, the reduction in leaks and improved response times caught the attention of insurers, who ultimately reduced premium rates due to the decreased risk, saving even more money from the projects.

A nod to other innovations and developments on my radar

Based on the measures I helped implement and deploy on the job, a commercial or multifamily residential building could reasonably reduce water use by anywhere from 25-60%, and relatively inexpensively at that, with an average payback of less than 3 years. Further measures, although likely ones that would incur higher upfront CAPEX, can offer reductions in excess of that. These measures include solutions like xeriscaping, greywater reuse systems, rainwater capture, smart irrigation, and tankless hot water heaters. In addition to saving money on avoided usage, these tactics offer other benefits. Xeriscaping, for instance, can be a big boon for biodiversity. Other measures help with compliance. California introduced legislation recently that will require non-functional turf to be removed in many places by 2028! Counties in Maryland have begun fining buildings for discharging excessive amounts of water into the sewers, and other areas may follow suit soon. Avoided fines, like those for emissions or energy use, are becoming relevant for water (yes, that’s like a Local Law 97 or BERDO for water).

Zooming out, major enterprises, like Microsoft, have committed to being “water positive.” Specifically, Microsoft aims to replenish more water than it consumes in its direct operations globally by 2030.

Microsoft has elevated water as a metric and tracks and sets target for its water usage akin to how it has a goal of achieving not just carbon neutrality, but to actually get to a carbon negative emissions balance position. With respect to water, it invests in water and habitat restoration efforts. As with carbon offsets and removals, more focus is still needed to address whether there’s a 1:1 match, or close to it, between how and where Microsoft uses water and occasions for more of it to be available. There are practical reasons businesses want to pursue net zero, whether with respect to emissions or a similar measure for water, but these goals should also come with the recognition that you do not want to operate a net-zero business in a non-net-zero world. One would also want to operate in the cleanest and water-abundant environment. That means addressing one’s own water first, then restoring elsewhere.

Naomi Klein writes:

Energy receives the lion’s share of attention and financing within the “sustainability” bucket. Water, in parallel with waste, is often confined to a narrower aperture, whether in coverage or the prescribed solution set, namely, reduce, then reuse where possible. Beyond that, the modal assumption is that we are already doing our best. While waste is factored into scope 3 emissions, water, if even reported on by companies, is an afterthought or disregarded entirely.

Simultaneously, however, concerns about water abound, in part because of increasing scarcity, such as in the American Southwest, increasing demand driven by AI, and increasing efforts to accelerate commoditization. While Pittsburgh recently rejected potential privatization of their water utility, communities across New Jersey and Pennsylvania have seen significant cost increase as a result of increased privatization of water utilities, enabled by their state legislatures. Further, if supply and demand were the ultimate determinants of price, water costs would be much higher in the West. Finally, aging infrastructure (also often damaged by natural disasters, themselves exacerbated by climate change) is also causing the southeast (SC, GA, FL) to see massive cost escalations.

Any thorough approach for sustainability and net zero should aim to make water use maximally efficient, which is something we’re failing at miserably today. The upshot is that significant progress wouldn’t require significant investments or newfangled technology. We can never eliminate water use like we may well ultimately be able to for emissions from energy and most of transportation, but we can achieve a system of responsible use and manage water in a way that promotes access and affordability. The approaches I learned about in commercial buildings, from leak avoidance to shower and toilet retrofits, are great examples of how much progress is ready to flow if we turn the right spigots.

This guest article was authored by Kyle Rosenthal. For more of his writing, see here.

*Kyle is a climate risk and sustainability professional based in Rochester, NY. He is a Board Member of the Climate Solutions Accelerator of the Genesee-Finger Lakes Region and runs his firm, Sustain With Age, which supports FirstWave Water Solutions and consults on topics from benchmarking to certification and compliance and disclosure to project implementation. He has a newsletter of the same name exploring the intersection of sustainability, aging, and the just transition.

He is a former employee of Ventas and remains a shareholder as well as of other companies potentially referenced, including Microsoft. All views are his own and do not reflect those of any institution or organization. They further do not constitute any recommendation to buy or sell any security or related product.

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Ciao,

Nick