AUSTRALIA is rich in many resources, but poor in one critical resource: water.
The world’s driest continent outside Antarctica, Australia has spent the first decade of the 21st Century coming to grips with the realisation that water scarcity might limit growth, or even fail to provide for growth to date.
While governments grapple with flow regimes and water trading, European engineering and electronics company Siemens has - unsurprisingly - proposed that the answers lie in technology.
The company’s Australian and German researchers undertook an extensive review of Australia’s future water and energy challenges, and had their proposals validated by 22 Australian research and engineering agencies, including CSIRO, Bureau of Meterology and a number of universities.
Siemens concluded that the key to sustainable use of both resources lies with “smart grids”: technology interfaces that accurately deliver the right resource to the right place in the right quantity.
In the case of water, Siemens proposes that all sources of water - rivers, groundwater, recycling, desalination plants - be progressively interlinked through sophisticated monitoring and flow control systems, so that the most appropriate water can be directed to the most appropriate use as it is needed.
In its Picture the Future report on water, released earlier this year, Siemens outlined what it said was a technologically-feasible vision for 2020.
"Eight desalination plants pushing through 770 gigalitres a year will supply 45 per cent of Australia’s urban water needs. Households will have real-time water usage statistics delivered via the internet," the report stated.
"Use of recycled water will increase by 60 per cent over current levels, to 400 gigalitres, mainly for industrial and irrigation use.
"All water used on-farm will be accurately metered. Most irrigation properties will use meters to gather real-time data on soil moisture levels and nutrient availability, and irrigate and fertilise accordingly to ensure minimal wastage.
"Up to 1500 gigalitres will be saved for environmental flows down the Murray-Darling system."
Roll forward to 2030, and Siemens has an even more optimistic view of a technology-integrated future.
All sources of public water are by then integrated into a sophisticated supply-demand management matrix, the company forecasts, which puts a price on water according to its source and directs it to the most appropriate use.
Farms are engaged with the matrix through smart water monitoring and nutrient sensors, and are supplied with real-time data on water availability and pricing. Farm managers can make informed on-the-spot decisions on whether they should use or trade water.
Nitrogen and phosphorus will be routinely recovered from wastewater treatment plants, which will be able to deliver 22 per cent of urban water needs from water re-used from irrigation and industry.
As much as 60 per cent of the treatment plants’ power will come from biogas captured from wastewater treatment.
Highly energy-efficient desalinisation plants will have cut urban areas’ current 85 per cent dependency on rainwater to just 35 per cent.
The combined effect of these technologies will be to restore reliable annual flows of 21,000 gigalitres to the Murray-Darling system, Siemens suggests.
This was the long-term average inflow into the system pre-1984; since then inflows have declined to 6000 gigalitres.
The Picture the Future paper argues that there are strong imperatives for taking positive action on water and energy.
For the past 15 years, demand for water in Australia has outstripped supply - a trend that is likely to get markedly worse under climate change and increased urbanisation.
It also makes good sense for the driest inhabited continent to establish itself as a centre of excellence for water management and export its expertise.
The idea of “peak water” - that water extraction exceeds natural resupply - is emerging across the world as even water-rich countries like the United States find that there is no such thing as an infinite resource.
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