Solutions to environmental challenges are often laden with paradoxes. Let’s take the case of desalination of sea water to make potable water. It’s becoming more common in some parts of the world, including the Mediterranean region and Australia. But there’s a catch: it’s energy-intensive, therefore carbon (more…)

Managing the electricity grid more efficiently is an important aspect of energy efficiency. It also has a significant role to play as solar and wind energy projects come online and start to feed into the grid.

As more renewable energy such as solar and wind enters the grid, there will be an increased volatility in (more…)

The Ontario Global Water Leadership Summit opened this morning in Toronto’s Metro Convention Centre to a large audience that converged to discuss the challenges of developing and implementing water technologies, related economic opportunities and its nexus with other areas such as (more…)

Efforts have been underway for decades to conserve both energy and water, but never in concert. This is unfortunate because energy uses a lot of water and water uses a lot of energy.

Two leading conservation organizations have set out to bring the efforts together. The American Council (more…)

Besides being good for the environment for reducing emissions and being a renewable source of power, wind energy also uses less water than other types of power generation, stated the American Wind Energy Association recently.

This is an important aspect of energy generation (more…)

Amongst the many oft-repeated arguments against wind power — that it is intermittent, unreliable, expensive, noisy, dangerous to wildlife, or aesthetically unappealing — one argument you will not hear from wind power detractors is that wind uses too much water. Why? Because wind uses a fraction of the water used by every other electrical (more…)

In another twist of the Belo Monte Dam saga, a Brazilian judge has ordered that work be suspended on the massive construction project. About one month ago, construction of the dam had been approved by the Brazilian environmental agency, IBAMA. The federal judge, Ronaldo Desterro, said that IBAMA had granted approval for the Belo Monte project (more…)

Energy Recovery Inc. (ERI), a company based in San Leandro, California, has developed technology that reduces the amount of energy required for desalination.

The technology does not directly relate to filtering water, but instead harnesses the pressure in the wastewater stream of reverse osmosis systems and transfers that pressure to the incoming feed stream to reduce the (more…)

More than $88 billion will be invested in desalination technologies worldwide from 2010 to 2016 as regions face dwindling supplies of freshwater and steep population growth, according to a new report. Declining costs associated with several key desalination technologies — including reverse osmosis — will make saltwater- (more…)

Water is the new oil. The $425 billion global water sector remains at the forefront of industrial, geopolitical, and social agendas because of a growing supply/demand imbalance and trends in water scarcity, quality, and safety issues. Only 3% of the world’s water is freshwater available to humans and the environment, and water scarcity is a growing problem. By 2025, it is (more…)