The State of U.S. Urban Water: Data and the Energy‐Water Nexus

Chini, Christopher M.; Stillwell, Ashlynn S.

doi:10.1002/2017wr022265

Cited by 110 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…Collecting energy use data for all European WWTPs proves infeasible at present, at least in a systematic and comprehensive way. A similar issue has been recently raised by Chini and Stillwell (2018) who studied energy use for water and wastewater treatment in the USA by directly requesting data from the operators. On the opposite side, large-scale assessments of energy use have been performed using coarsely aggregated data based on country-wide statistics of wastewater volumes or served population (Liu et al 2016).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Opportunities to improve energy use in urban wastewater treatment: a European-scale analysis

Ganora

Hospido

Husemann³

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Wastewater treatment is an essential public service that has a major impact on energy use in the urban water cycle, thus receiving increasing attention in context of the Water-Energy Nexus. Understanding the current energy use for wastewater is an essential step to design reliable policies promoting a more efficient use of resources. This paper develops a pan European estimation of electricity use for the treatment of wastewater, based on a dataset of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) across the continent. Prediction of electricity use has been performed using a statistical model that accounts for economies of scale. Different scenarios of improvements of energy use efficiency have been investigated to understand the possible reductions in electricity consumption at the continental scale. The overall WWTP electricity use in Europe (only plants with no less than 2000 population equivalent (PE) have been considered) was estimated at 24 747 GWh yr −1 , about the 0.8% of the electricity consumption in the EU-28. Small plants (less than 50 000 PE) represent almost 90% of the total number of plants, but process only 31% of the PE and require 42% of electricity use. Plants from mid to very large size (more than 50 000 PE), being only 10% of the plants, process about 70% of the PE with 58% of the total electricity use. If all plants that use more than the current average were shifted to the average value, the saving would be slightly more than 5500 GWh yr −1 . With highly stringent targets of efficiency improvement, saving of about 13 500 GWh yr −1 could be expected. Further considerations on the emerging role of WWTPs as energy and material producer are finally discussed.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Opportunities to improve energy use in urban wastewater treatment: a European-scale analysis

Ganora

Hospido

Husemann³

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…For urban metabolism studies to become a useful tool in planning and sustainability studies within the United States, a better, robust, and comprehensive database is necessary. This need not only applies to material flows, but also to flows of water (Chini & Stillwell, , ). To create and maintain this database, cities or regions would need to work with retailers and industry to better estimate sold and repackaged resources within their city boundaries.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We utilize two openly available databases of varying geospatial scale, one for water and another for other materials. For water fluxes, we utilize a recently compiled database by Chini and Stillwell that includes drinking water and wastewater fluxes and their embedded energy from 160 utilities across the United States (Chini & Stillwell, 2018a). These data are published through the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Sciences, Inc.'s (CUAHSI) HydroShare Platform (Chini & Stillwell, 2018b).…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The metabolism of U.S. cities 2.0

Chini

Stillwell

2019

J of Industrial Ecology

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In the fifty years since Abel Wolman first published an estimate of U.S. urban metabolism, the field of urban metabolism has begun to thrive, with cities outside the United States being much of the focus. As cities attempt to meet local and international sustainability goals, it is time to revisit the metabolism of cities within the United States. Using existing empirical databases for material flows (the Freight Analysis Framework) and a published database on urban water flux, we provide a revised estimate of urban metabolism for the typical U.S. city. We estimate median values of metabolism for a city of one million people, considering water resources, food, fuel, and construction materials. Food consumption and waste production increased substantially to 3,800 metric tons per day and 4,900 metric tons per day, respectively. To facilitate a second generation of urban metabolism, we extend traditional analyses to include the embedded energy required to facilitate material consumption with important implications in determining sustainable urban metabolism. We estimate that a city of one million people requires nearly 4,000 gigajoules of primary energy per day to facilitate its metabolism. Our results show high heterogeneity of urban metabolism across the United States. As a result of the study, we conclude that there is a distinct need to promote policies at the regional or city scale that collect data for urban metabolism studies. Urban metabolism is an important educational and decision‐making tool that, with an increase in data availability, can provide important information for cities and their sustainability goals.

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“…While this challenge has long been recognized in the literature, two recent studies demonstrate in practical terms just how difficult gathering utility‐specific energy data can be and build the case for more unified data acquisition and management practices. Working independently and simultaneously, our two research teams—Sowby and Burian (, ) at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City and Chini and Stillwell (, , 2017) at the University of Illinois at Urbana‐Champaign—conducted remarkably similar research on the energy requirements of public water systems and reached many of the same conclusions. The similarity and simultaneity of our projects testify to their importance and timeliness to the water industry.…”

mentioning

confidence: 85%