Since 2006, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has operated WaterSense® in partnership with manufacturers, utilities, and consumer groups. Similar to EPA's ENERGY STAR® role for energy-efficient products, WaterSense® employs a labeling system to identify water-efficient products, homes, and services. As of 2015, the WaterSense® program can claim credit for a total savings of 1.5 trillion gallons of water and $32.6 billion in consumer water and energy bills. Savings are tracked in the National Water Savings (NWS) model that combines innovative analyses with methodologies established in the energy sector. Merging life-cycle cost and national impact analysis models, the NWS model estimates savings from a bottom-up accounting method for individual products. The model extends those savings to the national level by employing parameters such as frequency of product use by number of people and building type, product lifetime, stock accounting, and market saturation. The NWS model tracks the water and consumer monetary savings of WaterSense-labeled products for residential and commercial water use both indoors and out.includes labeled toilets, faucets, showerheads, and faucet aerators for the residential sector; and flushometer valve toilets, urinals, and pre-rinse spray valves for the commercial
This report and its accompanying Microsoft Excel workbook summarize water data we found to support efforts of the Environmental Protection Agency's WaterSense program. WaterSense aims to extend the operating life of water and wastewater treatment facilities and prolong the availability of water resources by reducing residential and commercial water consumption through the voluntary replacement of inefficient water-using products with more efficient ones. WaterSense has an immediate need for water consumption data categorized by sector and, for the residential sector, per capita data available by region. This information will assist policy makers, water and wastewater utility planners, and others in defining and refining program possibilities. Future data needs concern water supply, wastewater flow volumes, water quality, and watersheds. This report focuses primarily on the immediate need for data regarding water consumption and product enduse. We found a variety of data on water consumption at the national, state, and municipal levels. We also found several databases related to water-consuming products. Most of the data are available in electronic form on the Web pages of the data-collecting organizations. In addition, we found national, state, and local data on water supply, wastewater, water quality, and watersheds.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is developing a computer model and spreadsheet tool for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to help estimate the water savings attributable to their WaterSense program. WaterSense has developed a labeling program for three types of plumbing fixtures commonly used in commercial and institutional settings: flushometer valve toilets, urinals, and pre-rinse spray valves. This National Water Savings-Commercial/Institutional (NWS-CI) model is patterned after the National Water Savings-Residential model, which was completed in 2008. Calculating the quantity of water and money saved through the WaterSense labeling program requires three primary inputs: (1) the quantity of a given product in use; (2) the frequency with which units of the product are replaced or are installed in new construction; and (3) the number of times or the duration the product is used in various settings. To obtain the information required for developing the NWS-CI model, LBNL reviewed various resources pertaining to the three WaterSense-labeled commercial/institutional products. The data gathered ranged from the number of commercial buildings in the United States to numbers of employees in various sectors of the economy and plumbing codes for commercial buildings. This document summarizes information obtained about the three products' attributes, quantities, and use in commercial and institutional settings that is needed to estimate how much water EPA's WaterSense program saves.
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