The Water-Energy Nexus: Capturing the Benefits of Integrated Resource Management for Water & Electricity Utilities and their Partners [co-sponsored by UCOP & U.S. Departmentof Energy].

In June 2015, Water UCI hosted a 60+ participant workshop with energy and water utility managers, regulatory agencies, and universities from throughout the Western U.S. Collaborators from key UCI programs (WEX Center, APEP) were closely integrated into the effort. Conferees discussed how to better manage both resources more holistically and also sought to identify strategies reflecting their vital link, as well as means to enhance the resilience of both resources – outcomes reported in an initial workshop publication

(D.L. Feldman. 2015. “California tackles water-energy interdependence by getting decision-makers to talk,” The Conversation https://theconversation.com/california-tackles-water-energy-interdependence-by-getting-decision-makers-to-talk-43040)

Follow-up activities include:

  1.  UCI researcher Brian Tarroja (Department of Mechanical Engineering and Advanced Power and Energy Program) and staff from Lawrence Livermore National Lab, UCOP, and DOE published a UCI-U.S. DOE report.(Capturing the Benefits of Integrated Resource Management for Water & Electricity Utilities and their Partners. 2016. United States Department of Energy – University of California Irvine, May – principle authors: Brian Tarroja, Sandra Jenkins, Michael A. Berger, Lifang Chiang http://energy.gov/epsa/downloads/capturing-benefits- integrated-resource-management-water-electricity-utilities)
  2. Findings from the workshop were incorporated into a UCOP report (featuring several UCI researchers) unveiled at the Bending the Curve workshop at UC San Diego (October 2015).(UCOP. 2015. Bending the Curve – Executive summary: Ten scalable solutions for carbon neutrality and climate stability. University of California http://uc-carbonneutralitysummit2015.ucsd.edu/_files/Bending-the-Curve.pdf
)
  3. A multi-authored article in the journal Collabra appeared in late 2016 partly based on this work.  (Daniel Kammen, Doug Rotman, Magali Delmas, David Feldman, Mike Mielke, Ramamoorthy Ramesh and Daniel Sperling. 2017. “Chapter 6. Scaling Up Solutions to State, National and Global Levels.” Collabra, 2(1): 20, pp. 1–11, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/collabra.65 http://www.collabra.org/articles/10.1525/collabra.65/
)
  4. Director Feldman participated in a U.S. DOE workshop at the University of Texas, Austin in August 2015 titled Energy-Water Nexus Roundtable #5: Systems Integration which examined: the role of current decisions in shaping future integrated energy-water systems and infrastructure; approaches to understanding future conditions; and ways to improve energy-water infrastructure resilience.  (http://energy.gov/under-secretary-science-and-energy/downloads/energy-water-roundtables
)
  5. Feldman will give a keynote address about the UCI workshop at the National Water – Energy nexus conference (Los Angeles, 2/28).  (Bridging the Divide: The Challenges of Integrated Resource Management for Water and Power. 2017. Water energy nexus conference http://www.water-energy-nexus.com/agenda.htm)