Water & Wastewater Treatment Magazine
Issue link: https://fhpublishing.uberflip.com/i/944532
THE TECH: RENEWABLE ENERGY ADVANCES What's the deal: Last September the government awarded contracts worth £176m to 11 low-carbon electricity schemes, with offshore wind the big winner. This meant those schemes will generate nearly 3 per cent of the UK electricity demand – a huge step forward for renewables. What's more, over half of the electricity generated in the UK in 2017 came from low-carbon sources for the first me ever, according to the Carbon Brief website, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance says wind and solar are expected to supply a third of global power by 2040. In short, the me is coming when renewables will provide the majority of our electric energy supply – and poten ally support electrified transport and heat demand too. Why it ma ers: The plunging cost of renewables and the increasingly posi ve load factors being achieved by large scale installa ons are obviously big news for generators and their investors. But the rise of renewables also has big implica ons for other u li es. Water company investments in renewables, especially solar farms, have burgeoned as costs have fallen and the opportunity to reduce the very high energy costs associated with their opera ons has become more accessible. Many water companies now have ambi ous targets for energy self-sufficiency and as their renewable investments grow, they are also realising opportuni es to benefit from revenue streams associated with ownership of genera on. Say what?: "The challenge is that a growing reliance on wind and solar energy can cause electrical grids to become unstable, hence the need for disrup ve advances." - Survey respondents THE TECH: BLOCKCHAIN What's the deal: Long associated with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, blockchain is a distributed ledger technology which allows for fast and super-secure transac ons between mul ple par es in a network. Held on mul ple computers as a huge distributed database, a blockchain ledger is both secure and immutable: falsifica on is impossible, because of the impossibility of changing every distributed record and its hash-encoding at the same me. Why it ma ers: The poten al for blockchain to disrupt the u li es industry is enormous. It is the ul mate accompaniment to the rise of distributed energy resources, offering to enable peer to peer trading of energy between prosumers. But while rapid and distributed energy trading is perhaps the most talked about u li es applica on for blockchain, other uses for the technology are also being explored in the industry today. UK blockchain leader Electron, where former Npower chief execu ve Paul Massara is a director, has developed a blockchain enabled switching service, for example, which could allow consumers to flip their supplier in a ma er of seconds. Such a revolu on makes the industry's slow progress towards 24hr switching seem archaic. Then too, there is the poten al for blockchain to play a major role in tacking rising problems for u li es around fair treatment of vulnerable customers. Pilot schemes are underway to see if the technology pla orm could enable rapid and secure informa on sharing between government systems, banks and service providers which would infallibly offer a complete and current vulnerability iden ty for an individual. Such an applica on might overcome exis ng problems experienced by both energy and water u li es in iden fying and tracking vulnerability. THE TECH: WATER RE-USE TECHNOLOGIES What's the deal: Despite the commonly-held misconcep on that the water we drink has already been through several people's bodies, direct water re- use is in fact a rela ve rarity in the UK. However, the advent of compact, inexpensive treatment technologies together with growing water scarcity could make re-use an increasingly appealing proposi on, whether it be greywater systems which re-use par ally treated water for flushing toilets, or more comprehensive localised treatment systems which, in combina on with rainwater harves ng, could take individual sites en rely 'off-grid'. Why it ma ers: Water re-use boosts water resilience at a local level and could be the key to easing pressure on the country's overstretched water resources, while also helping to reduce the burden on urban sewerage systems. However, if deployed widely it could disrupt the centralised business model of the water u li es, calling into ques on the tradi onal boundaries of responsibility for water supply, water quality and public health. Nevertheless, recognising the poten al sustainability benefits, some water companies have used the changes in connec on charging regime to incen vise the installa on of rainwater harves ng and water-reuse in new housing developments. Say what?: "Water re-use and treatment could change the balance between water supply and sewerage services." "It's easy to imagine local grids emerging, which use rainwater run-off for secondary water services." - Survey respondents 34 | MARCH 2018 | WWT | www.wwtonline.co.uk P R E S E N T S I N A S S O C I A T I O N W I T H