Water means Life, Energy means Wealth

Warning some information in this article will be depressing and not fun at all, and I don’t have the magic answer at the end. If you are already in a bad mood, I would use Google search to find some photos of cute kittens. There are a lot of “transitions” going on right now including energy, climate, water and demographics. The next three articles will share some of my humble opinions on these challenges.

Water means Life: I grew up in the western United States. The reality is that water means life, and here in my country there isn’t enough of it in the best of times. That fact is not a hard lesson to understand for a native. But we got a real problem. Too many new residents wanting water parks, green lawns and too little of it is falling from the skies. Drought has gripped the western US for many years now (some measure it in decades), making this year’s spring runoff closely watched. ?Here are a few of the realities facing my corner of the planet:

·???????The water content of snowpack in the South Platte River Basin, the source of half of Denver’s water supply, measured about 35% below normal on May 2, 2022 while recent daily water usage (in Denver) of 192 million gallons exceeded the historical average. Colorado’s population is now growing at 15% per year. In my home town of Colorado Springs, every corner lot has a new apartment being built. I bet those folks would like to have access to water as well.

·???????The water in Lake Powell, one of the nation’s largest reservoirs, has fallen so low amid the Western drought that federal officials are resorting to emergency measures to avoid shutting down hydroelectric power at the Glen Canyon Dam. The Arizona dam, which provides electricity to seven states, isn’t the only U.S. hydropower plant in trouble. The iconic Hoover Dam, also on the Colorado River, has reduced its water flow and power production. California shut down a hydropower plant at the Oroville Dam for five months because of low water levels in 2021, and officials have warned the same thing could happen in 2022.

·???????Last summer (2021), the water level in the Great Salt Lake reached its lowest point on record, and it’s likely to fall further this year. The lake’s surface area, which covered about 3,300 square miles in the late 1980s, has since shrunk to less than 1,000, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. ?The salt content in the part of the lake closest to Salt Lake City used to fluctuate between 9 percent and 12 percent. But as the water in the lake drops, its salt content has increased. If it reaches 17 percent — the algae in the water will struggle, threatening the brine shrimp that consume it. In theory, the fix is simple: Let more water from melting snowpack reach the lake, by sending less toward homes, businesses and farms. But metropolitan Salt Lake City has barely enough water to support its current population. And it is expected to grow almost 50 percent by 2060. It also consumes more water for residential use than other desert cities — 96 gallons per person per day last year, compared with 78 in Tucson and 77 in Los Angeles.

·???????States in the Upper Colorado River Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, Utah and New Mexico) are at odds with the Lower Colorado River Basin States (California, Arizona and Nevada), this is going to get ugly. In an announcement in June 2022 by Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton calling for 2 million to 4 million acre-feet in cuts in Colorado River use by the end of next year to avoid the system from reaching “critically low water levels.” The system supplies water and generates electricity for millions of users across the West. The actions discussed in the letter include the potential for more releases from Upper Basin reservoirs to aid Lake Powell. The new Upper Basin letter, however, notes that none of these measures will be as effective without significant actions in the Lower Basin states of California, Arizona and Nevada. The Upper Basin states collectively used about 3.5 million acre-feet, down from about 4.5 million the prior year, while the Lower Basin including Mexico used about 10 million acre-feet in 2021, up slightly from the prior year, according to numbers from the UCRC. Upper Basin states including Colorado have received less water because of climate change and other factors and there are no massive reservoirs to store water like those that exist for the Lower Basin.

In the Northeast US, a different kind of climate change problem has affected hydropower dams – too much rainfall all at once. The United States has over 2,100 operational hydroelectric dams, with locations in nearly every state. They play essential roles in their regional power grids. But most were built in the past century under a different climate than they face today. As global temperatures rise and the climate continues to change, competition for water will increase, and the way hydropower supply is managed within regions and across the power grid in the U.S. will have to evolve.

Hydropower contributes 6% to 7% of all power generation in the U.S., but it is a crucial resource for managing the U.S. electric grids, the best energy storage solutions we have come up with. Because it can quickly be turned on and off, hydroelectric power can help control minute-to-minute supply and demand changes (baseload). It can also help power grids quickly bounce back when blackouts occur. Hydropower makes up about 40% of U.S. electric grid facilities that can be started without an additional power supply during a blackout, in part because the fuel needed to generate power is simply the water held in the reservoir behind the turbine. In addition, it can serve as a giant battery for the grid. The U.S. has over 40 pumped hydropower plants, which pump water uphill into a reservoir and later send it through turbines to generate electricity as needed. So, while hydroelectricity represents a small portion of generation, these dams are integral to keeping the U.S. power supply flowing.

Energy means Wealth: In the IPCC’s 2018 special report on 1.5°C, the only scenario presented that did not rely on substantial carbon dioxide removal (beyond a bit of tree planting), imagined instead a 32% reduction in global energy demand by 2050 (against a 2010 baseline). Since 2010, global energy demand has in fact increased by more than 15%: from where we are now, energy demand would need to fall by more than 40% in the next 28 years, back to where it was in the late 1990s. Yet no government has anything approaching a credible plan for how to achieve such dramatic cuts in energy demand. Few politicians will be loathed to ask voters to sacrifice this much (the Germans are being asked to ration natural gas usage this winter). What’s more, given that more than half a billion people globally still do not have access to electricity, if this is to be a just transition, developed countries are going to have to reduce their energy demand by significantly more than 40% between now and 2050.

"The world has never witnessed such a major energy crisis in terms of its depth and its complexity," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol warned at an energy forum in Sydney earlier. "We might not have seen the worst of it yet. This is affecting the entire world."

So how might we reduce our energy demand? There are some obvious things to prioritize — like improving the energy efficiency of buildings and reducing food waste — but these are only a start. If we are serious about net zero by 2050, then we must also get serious about changing our economic model and our lifestyles to one that does not rely on rising material and energy consumption. I read an article recently calling for the end of “growth” mindset in our economic measures. Imagine that if you can. Maybe someone like me in retirement after decades of saving from a good paying career can settle on what I have but is that a realistic case for everyone?

Beyond a certain level of per capita consumption — a level that developed countries have long since surpassed — the equivalence between consumption and wellbeing breaks down. Environmentalists are now recommending that developed economies consider hitting the breaks on growth and shifting into a different gear pursuing “degrowth.” After spending most of your adult life pursuing the benefits of growth are you ready to give all that up for a new economic model? Are our children going to have any choice? It used to be that the one with the most toys at the end of your life was the winner. Now we are hearing to save the planet, we have to give up some or most of our toys. Are we willing to do that?

Ultimately then, the challenge is political. There are a lot of things we can do with new technology and better engineering, but it seems like that will only lead to incremental change and modest improvements in the carbon budget. If the environmental scientists are right, that won’t be enough. Say good-bye to 1.5 degrees C and start planning for something like 2.3 degree C warner even if carbon sequestration plays a major role in the future.

But the only kind of degrowth a liberal market economy is capable of is the painful kind that involves some people not being able to heat their homes or put food on the table for their families. The poor stay poor and most of us are facing some pretty significant sacrifices. Politicians don’t get re-elected with that campaign promise. If we’re to downsize our economy in a way that doesn’t impose serious hardship on the most vulnerable members of society, we need a politics capable of managing not only a finite carbon budget, but finite material and energy budgets, equitably. Are we anywhere close to that right now? Our elected officials can’t seem to agree on anything substantial.

I think I have enough toys and am ready to settle down on the sidelines for a simpler life, but that is the view of an old man who was able to do pretty well from the old economic rules. I think I worked hard for my toys, now they tell me I was wrong to pursue those goals. Are we ready for “degrowth” and a return to a simpler, less consumer-oriented life? Where are those memes of those cute kittens?