March 20, 2025 • 29 mins
We live on an increasingly thirsty planet. Growing populations and rising demand from industry, data centers and farming have led to water stress across the globe. Even under a scenario where global warming is limited to 2C, some three billion people are projected to live in areas where water demand exceeds supply by the middle of the century. Energy-intensive desalination plants offer a solution, but what other opportunities lie in technologies that can not only increase water supply but more efficiently manage it? On today’s show, Dana Perkins is joined by Stephanie Diaz, a BNEF technology and innovation analyst, to discuss her recent research note “Tech Radar: Water Supply, Use and Treatment”.
Complementary BNEF research on the trends driving the transition to a lower-carbon economy can be found at BNEF<GO> on the Bloomberg Terminal or on bnef.com
Links to research notes from this episode:
Tech Radar: Water Supply, Use and Treatment - https://www.bnef.com/insights/35987
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Dana Perkins and you're listening to Switched on,
the podcast brought to you by BNF. Today, we're here
to talk about the existing and emerging technology solutions to
address water stress. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
anywhere between one point five to two point five billion
people live in areas exposed to water stress today. This
(00:23):
is forecasted to rise to three billion by twenty fifty,
and that's only if warming is limited to two degrees
c by that point. Humans are made up of roughly
sixty percent water, so to say that its essential would
be an understatement. And we live on an increasingly thirsty planet,
not just due to population growth and demands from agriculture,
but also owing to increasing demand from industry and data centers. Yes,
(00:47):
the same data centers that are needed to power AI technology.
So where do we get more water? From energy intensive
desalination plants to reducing water loss, to increasing water reuse
and recycling. We'll get into the technology side of this
essential building block for life on this planet. I'm joined
today by b and EF technology and innovation analyst Stephanie Diaz,
(01:10):
who shares findings from her recently released research note titled
tech Radar Water supply use and Treatment. Bn EF clients
will be able to find this at BNOF go on
the Bloomberg terminal or at BNF dot com. All right,
let's get to talking about water. Stephanie, thank you for
(01:35):
joining today.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Thanks for having me, Dana.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So we're here to talk about water today, and we
know that this has so many important applications in addition
to what we drink and agriculture. But actually, as we
so often talk about in the show, the energy transition
is actually quite dependent upon water. We'll get to the
demand side part of it momentarily, but as we tend
to kick off many of these shows, let's start with
(01:59):
some definitions and then also as we think about the
fact that with climate change there is disruption to traditional
precipitation patterns, what is the definition of water stress?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Sure, but let's start by actually talking about water itself, right,
because water is really ubiquitous in everyday life. It's really
an amazing thing for a modern miracle that we can
just go to the tap and turn on our water.
But really what that ends up meaning in practice is
that we use an estimated four trillion cubic meters of
water annually. And most of this is coming from things
like rainfall, snowmells, river runoff, and we collect it from
(02:35):
surface water and groundwater, so think lakes, rivers, and aquifers.
These together account for ninety two percent of human water use,
and all of this water gets used in a couple
of different ways. About three quarters of that goes into
the agriculture sector, so think crops, livestock, aquaculture, and then
the remainder gets used for industrial or municipal purposes. So
(02:55):
when we talk about water stress, what we're actually talking
about is does the water demand outpace the supply. This
is a really localized definition because water is a really
regional thing. But what you should think about is between
the water that gets used for human purposes, the water
that needs to be there to in order to replenish rivers,
in order to you know, water forests, be used by
(03:16):
the environment. All of that, does that water demand surpass
the amount of water that is available in that area
for things like precipitation, groundwater, all of that. We are
increasingly seeing that water stress is becoming a pertinent issue
around the world. So today about one point five to
two point five billion people live in areas exposed to
water scarcity, and under a two degrees celsius scenario of
(03:40):
global warming that's expected to rise to approximately three billion
people by twenty fifty, demand for fresh water could be
up to forty percent greater than supply by twenty thirty,
according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
So now let's pivot to the demand side part of things,
which has to do with this wider question of you know,
water for a lot of the end uses that you know,
we do traditionally talk about here at BNF, Can you
talk about some of the sectors that maybe many we've
thought of or some that we haven't thought of, that
are really heavily dependent upon this natural resource.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, I mean there are so many examples. Let's talk agriculture.
It's kind of a given that water is important for agriculture,
but we often don't think about this implicit water trade
that is happening in crop production. So, just to give
an example, Fondamonte is an agriculture company and it grows
alfalfa in the US state of Arizona, and that alfalfa
is then harvested and shipped back to Saudi Arabia to
(04:35):
feed cattle there. The company turned to Arizona because of
water scarcity issues in Saudi Arabia and the ability to
grow you around in Arizona, but Arizona itself is a
hot desert state. Water also has implications for the energy sector.
French company EDF had to reduce output of several of
its nuclear power plants in twenty twenty two as heat
waves made the river water that's usually used to cool
(04:57):
those nuclear power plants too warm. They had to reduce
their output as a result. It has impacts on mining
because water is used in querying and milling, and the
amount of water used for those processes can put stress
on local water supplies. In Mexico, Group of Mexicos, Buena
Vista del Cobre Mine dealt with protests in June twenty
twenty four as the company was issued permits entitling it
(05:19):
to more than fifty billion liters of water annually, which
is fifty seven percent of that local watershed's volume, even
though that area is experiencing a regional drought. You have
examples across you know, thermal power plants that use up
to three thousand liters of water per megawat hour for
cooling the steel industry consumes up to one hundred and
seventy five liters of water per ton of steel produce.
(05:40):
Water ends up being used throughout so many of the
different industries that we cover here at BENF, So.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
We could go in so many different directions when we're
thinking about end uses and demand side for water. But
let's focus in on one that has been incredibly buzzy lately,
and that is data centers and the growth of data
centers in some respects to this rise in AI applications
that are really leading to a lot more demand for
(06:07):
electricity in order to keep these data centers cool. Can
you talk about how water is connected to this burgeoning
space right now?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Data centers and AI are actually surprisingly dependent on water
in two ways. So let's talk about the first one,
which is cooling. So think of your laptop. When you
run it for a long period of time, it gets warm, right.
Data centers do the same thing. They get warm over time,
and water based cooling systems are often used in order
to take that heat away from the data centers and
keep them cool. This is a really energy efficient way
(06:38):
to do this, but it does mean that a lot
of water can get consumed in Virginia's Data Center Alley,
which is just outside of Washington, DC. Companies like Amazon
and Microsoft used one point nine billion gallons of water
in twenty twenty three, a sixty four percent increase since
twenty nineteen. The second way in which data centers and
AI are dependent on water is through semiconductors themselves. So
(06:59):
the chips that go into these data centers. In order
to create these chips, you need really pure water, like
ultra pure water. This is water that is so pure
that it would actually kill us humans if we drink it.
But this is the kind of extremely pure water that
is necessary for the chips because they're working on the
scale of nanometers right. In order to produce these sort
of chips, you need access to really clean water, and
(07:22):
as a result, they end up consuming a lot of water.
According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of semiconductor
manufacturing facilities are in watersheds expected to face severe water
stress between twenty thirty and twenty forty. And now I
want you to add to this another twenty four to
forty percent of facilities that are currently under constructed, and
then another forty percent of facilities that are currently planned
(07:43):
and underway that will also be located in severe water
stress areas. So when taken altogether, you can really see
how data centers ai big technique to be thinking more
about their water usage. A great example of this is
how in Chile recently a court partially reversed approval for
a two hundred million dollars Google data center projects, citing
that the company needed to go back and reconsider its
(08:04):
water use. This is after the data center had already
announced that it was going to switch from water based
cooling to the less water intensive want more energy intensive
air based cooling, and we've seen companies like Microsoft and
AWS commit to being water positive and aiming to replenish
more water than they use by twenty thirty.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Now, I think a lot of people understand that water
needs to be processed before it can be used, especially
well depending upon where it came from. But can you
just actually explain what ultra pure water is and why
it's deadly for humans.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So water needs to be processed to the level of
purity required for what people what it's being used for.
So take humans. We need to drink clean water, right,
but we actually don't need to drink perfectly pure water
because there's actually useful stuff in water. Water contains minerals
that are one of the ways we get them as
part of like a nutritional basis. If you drink ultra
pure water, it's too pure for our bodies and so
(08:59):
then our red blood cells end up rupturing because the
water wants to like even out the concentration.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I know this is not related to the energy system,
but I just I had to understand that. Okay. Another
form of water, since we're using this term very colloquially,
is salt water, and desalination is a technology that has
been used in order to remove salt from water to
make it to the level of purity that we can
use it for other use cases. Can you talk about
(09:25):
desalination whether or not that for regions that may be
experiencing water stress, is desalination something that is becoming a
more popular technology.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Desalination is currently responsible for producing about two percent of
our global water global freshwater, that is, and while it's
only two percent globally, in water stress regions like the
Middle East, it is much higher than that. Saudi Arabia,
for example, relies on desalination for seventy percent of its freshwater,
and Kuwait relies on it for ninety percent of its
(09:55):
fresh water. So desalination can play a massive rule in
specific regions based on how localized that water stress is.
Desalination itself is a really mature technology. We've been doing
this for a long time now. There are currently about
fifteen thousand existing facilities globally that produce ninety five million
cubic meters of fresh water per day, but this is
expected to grow over time. The International Energy Agency expects
(10:20):
that energy demand for desalination is set to double by
twenty thirty from twenty twenty three levels, reaching nearly four
thousand Petta Rules of energy by the end of the decade.
Just to give a sense of scale, that's roughly the
energy consumption of Poland in twenty twenty three. So desalination
is a mature technology and it is definitely widely used
in some parts of the world, but not in all
(10:41):
of the world.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Are there innovations being made in the desalination space or
is it just becoming more prevalent.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Technologies for desalination are getting better. We've seen, for example,
that originally desalination was mostly done through multi stage flash
and multi effect distillation, which are both thermal methods of
removing salt fur water. Basically, the idea there is you
take water salty water, you evaporate it, and the salt
gets left behind, but the water becomes a gas. You
collect the gas and then you condense it so that
(11:07):
you have liquid water. Again. This is a really good
way of creating clean water, but it's also really energy intensive,
and so we saw the switch from these thermal methods
to using reverse osmosis instead. Reverse osmosis accounts for more
than two thirds of desalination capacity around the world today,
and the idea behind reverse osmosis is that you have
a semi permeable membrane and all that means is that
(11:29):
this membrane lets water through but not salt. And so
you push the salty water against this membrane and the
water gets pushed through, but a lot of the salt
stays behind. This is the most common method used today
and partly because it requires less energy to produce that
fresh water. But there are still new methods of desalination
being explored, such as electrodialysis, capacitive deionization, and humidification dehumidification cycling.
(11:54):
The idea behind these newer methods is that they're all
looking for ways to lower the energy demand of desalination
and turn could lower the cost of water production.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So I'm glad you brought that up. How much does
it cost?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, so the cheapest desalinated water you can find in
the world would be in Saudi Arabia, where you can
get it at less than fifty cents per cubic meter.
Everywhere else in the world has more expensive desalinated water
than that, and it really depends on things like the
maturity of the industry in that area, the salinity of
the water that you're using in the first place. The
(12:26):
saltier your feed water is, the harder it is to
get the salt out, and therefore the more expensive it is.
Things like the cost of energy and as well as
the pre and post treatment required for that water depending
on its use case.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
So you've just described this process of desalination, which I
fully recognize is one complex into energy intensive and with
that comes costs. So it's a application that is a
you know, if you really need it and you have
access to salt water, you're going to use this. But
let's talk a bit about how people are currently getting water.
(12:58):
And I'm thinking about parts of the world that are
currently under water stress. So the state that I grew
up in is California and produces a ton of food
and also has a lot of periods of water stress
in recent history, a lot of years that would be
classified as droughts. And I know that this is not
unique to California, but there's a lot of conversation about
the water that is in dams and whether or not
(13:20):
to release it at certain points in time. There was
some water recently released. It was being held for agriculture
for it later in the summer for August September, which
is now no longer available. So water stress is coming
to California potentially later this year. Is desalination something that's
on the cards for that part of the world or
other areas where there is water stress, or is this
(13:42):
really somewhat limited use cases at least at this point
in time because of how expensive and complex it is.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Descalination is definitely being considered by more parts of the world. California,
for example, recently released a report on the future of
desalination plants in the state. But you have to remember
that and we're thinking about desalination, we're comparing it to
the alternative, which oftentimes is water that is really really
cheap and oftentimes free. So take for example, if you
(14:09):
are a farmer that depends on groundwater, you have to
pay for a well, you know, install a well that
goes down into the ground, and pay for the pumps,
but the water itself you might not be paying for.
You might not be paying for water that you draw
from a lake for example. So oftentimes one of the
things that we talk about in desalination is we have
to lower the cost of water if we want this
technology to be more competitive, because we're competing against really
(14:33):
cheap access to water in lots of parts of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And then just let's talk about that one drawback other
than the energy intensity, which has to do with increasing
the salinity in wherever it is you're pulling the water from.
If you take out the fresh water but you leave
the salt, what does that do to the local ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, so reverse osmosis, which as I mentioned is the
most commonly used process today, ends up resulting into two
streams of water. Like you have the fresh water, which
is what you want to go on and use, and
then you have this thing called brine. And this is Basically,
this even saltier water that is left behind. Globally, more
than one hundred and fifty million cubic meters of brine
are produced per day from desalination, which is more than
(15:11):
double the amount of fresh water produced from those same facilities. Now,
this brine can have an impact on the environment. First
of all, it's saltier, which is not what the aquatic
life in oceans are used to. But you can also
have other impacts, such as the temperature being different. That's
why these facilities have to take into account things like
how they disperse this brine into the ocean in order
(15:33):
to try to minimize impacts. They also have to design
their systems so that you know, aquatic life isn't actually
sucked into with the desalination plant in the first place
when they're grabbing the ocean water.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Okay, so there are certainly some drawbacks that one needs
to consider before we revert to wide scale use of
desalination and before we go to the measures that are
being taken to maybe reduce water consumption. So we're being
a little wiser about what it is that we're applying
it to and how we're doing it. Let's just talk
about one other emerging technology. So atmospheric water generation is
(16:05):
seen as an emerging technology. But I'm going to stop
for a minute before you get to well, when you
go to explain what it is, can you also tell
me how this technology differs from the dehumidifier that I
have sucking the water out of my clothes as I'm
drying them on the drying rack.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Oh, sometimes it doesn't actually, So the idea high atmospheric
water generation is that you are taking water vapor from
the air and condensing it, and there are actually a
couple of ways to do that. Some of it is
simple condensation, which is like the seeing technology that is
in your dehumidifier. Actually, sometimes it's instead using a process
called absorption, in which you have basically a solid that
(16:43):
the water then adheres to. Sometimes you have things called bognets,
which are basically inspired by spiderwebs and water drop lists
collect on the strings of these nets and then coalesce together,
creating more water. So atmospheric water generation is actually just
an umbrella term for a couple of different technologies, but
they all aim to collect water from the air instead.
(17:04):
This makes it different from desalination, which you know requires
some sort of large body of salty water nearby. Atmospheric
water generation isn't limited by having access to a body
of water, it's instead thinking about how much humidity is
in the air.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Okay, So now that we've talked about the technologies that
are potentially increasing supply, let's talk about water management and
what can be done to reduce the amount of demand.
You know how much of a role deletes play in pipes.
You know, what are some of the main areas where
we're just losing water needlessly, and what steps are being
taken to ameliorate that.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
In addition to being able to increase these sources of
water that we have, being able to reduce how much
water we need is also incredibly useful, and there are
a couple of ways that we can do this. Let's
start from the utility perspective. Water utilities are often the
way in which water gets distributed in places, and so
we have these large infrastructure networks that manage these large
(18:01):
water flows, covering everything from distributing drinking water to also
storm water management. Now, if we look at just drinking water,
we know that today over three hundred and forty five
million cubic meters of water are lost in distribution daily,
and that's money that is lost by those water utilities
because it's water that they sent out but didn't actually
(18:22):
make it to a customer, so they don't get to
charge their customers for it. But it's also water that
we would rather put to good use. We would rather
not waste that water. You also have things like making
sure that these really large infrastructure systems are operating well.
We can that way, we can find these leaks quickly,
we can manage the equipment well. And so as a result,
we ATF tracked thirty six different companies that are selling
(18:45):
their products to these utilities across those different use cases
around managing their equipment better, finding leaked to connection, being
able to monitor their water quality, all in an effort
to make sure that we use our water more effectively.
These companies have collectively raised two hundred seventy six million
dollars since twenty sixteen, which is admittedly raising money a
little slower than most climate technologies. But that's not to
(19:07):
say that this isn't really useful, because we really need
to make sure that we're using our water as effectively
as possible.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Well, and so then you know, let's talk about agriculture,
which is an application that we I think all kind
of really understand in its basic sense. And you identified
earlier that in some of these use cases, you know,
they are aquifers underground, they have access to them, but
that doesn't mean that it's limitless. Is that the primary
motivation for innovation in reducing water use in agricultural applications
(19:37):
and what are some of the way is that the
agriculture system is actually trying to be a little bit
more cautious about their water consumption.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, agriculture is the largest
user of fresh water supply, and water stress therefore really
is impactful to this industry. It's whether it's aquifers that
are being drawn down and aren't being replenished by ra water,
whether it's rivers that have so much water being withdrawn
upstream that by the time you a downstream farmer gets
(20:08):
access to the river, it's drier than it would have
been otherwise. Altogether, we're seeing that water stress is increasingly
a challenge that farmers and the agriculture industry have to face.
But it's also one that we it's really important that
we resolved. Irrigation is one of the ways you do
that right, and some nine hundred and thirty five billion
cubic meters of water we're used for irrigation purposes. In
(20:31):
twenty twenty one, irrigated lands account for thirty three percent
of global crop production and forty four percent of cereal
production despite only being twenty four percent of crop lands,
meaning that like they're functuring above their weight, your irrigation
is really important. But climate change is making these water
flows more erratic, and so the agriculture sector is looking
at how they can use water more efficiently, specifically by
(20:55):
thinking about how they can lower the amount of water
they use or time when using that water really well,
so that they can use less water while improving their yield.
The way they do this is through analytics that can
help them better understand things like weather patterns, soil moisture,
better understand where water is being lost on the farm,
(21:15):
and the hope is that they can minimize crop losses
as a result. Just as an example, in the US
since two thousand, drought and high temperatures have been the
primary driver of indemnified crop loss under the US Federal
Crop Insurance Program, responsible for forty three point seven percent
of pavements. So figuring out how to use water really
effectively has significant financial consequences for agriculture.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Okay, so when it comes to water and perhaps recycling
of water, where does the role of gray water come
into this? And water treatment and reuse, which you know
is reducing the amount of what is required because you're
making better use of what you already have.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah, absolutely thinking about reusing, recycling, and also eventually you
discharge water out into the world. All of that means
that you want to think about water and wastewater treatment.
You want to make sure that the water is still
at a good enough quality for whatever it is your
deal with mix. So if you're trying to recycle water
within your plant, you want to make sure that the
(22:17):
water is still pure enough that it's not going to
damage your equipment. If you are discharging it out into
the environment, you want to make sure that it is
clean enough that you're not running into problems with environmental regulations.
So that means thinking about things like heavy metals, chemicals, microbes.
These are all different types of impurities that can be
found in water, and depending on what that water is
(22:39):
used for, you want to think about what's the concentration
of those impurities that you want in your water. So
water treatment tech is already widely used today, as is
wastewater treatment, and as water stress becomes more salient, we
can expect to see these technologies become more used throughout
the world.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So as we think about this as a problem that
will affect certain regions more than others, but certainly is global.
Are these solutions and some of these ways of purifying water,
treating water, recycling water, do they have wide scale application
or are these going to be really hyper regional, hyperlocal solutions.
(23:18):
I guess the question I'm asking is how scalable are
the solutions going to be? As people are looking to
tackle water stress worldwide.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
We've already seen how water tech can be widely adopted.
Take drinking water right, We around the world have parts
of the world which have really good access to drinking
water because we've done a good job of building the
infrastructure required to treat that drinking water. Access to clean
water has expanded significantly over the last two decades, although
we still have large portions of Oceana and Sub Saharan
(23:47):
Africa that remain without access to it. Wastewater treatment is
also widespread. Now there are over fifty thousand municipally operated
wastewater treatment plants around the world globally, and we can
expect to see that increase as more places adopt wastewater regulations. However,
it should be noted that when I say water treatment
(24:08):
tech that encompasses so many things, there are over one
hundred different technologies that I am subtly referencing in that,
and that's because water can just be so different. The
water that comes out of a pulp and paper manufacturing
facility is different from the water that comes out of
a steel facility, is different from the water that comes
out of my apartment, for example. So there is plenty
(24:31):
of opportunity for water tech to grow an adoption, though
exactly what type of technology it's actually a little bit
more specific than that, and not everything works in every circumstance.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, So while we're talking about, you know, trying to
apply some industrial processes to improve water quality for some
of the broader use cases, there are going to be
lots of different use cases that are going to need
to emerge and have this water tech that you're speaking about.
So let's go into one of those more specific cases,
which has to do with purifying water and these You know, well,
(25:02):
there's a lot of discussion about forever chemicals and human
consumption and how food water is carrying some of these
things at the moment. So PFAS, which stands for I
don't even think I can say this out loud, what
does PFAST stand for?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I was, well, I was looking at that. I was like,
oh god, I have to power and polyfloral alkyl substances.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Right, So this term, First of all, what a PFAS?
Why should we be concerned? And then on the more
optimistic side, what is happening in water tech to reduce
p FAST in our water?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes? So p FAS is an umbrella term for thousands
of different synthetic chemicals. So basically, I want you to
think of a nice little hydrocarbon chain and we're going
to pop off some of those hydrogen atoms and attach
multiple fluorine atoms instead. This gives it the property where
it can be used in nonstick coatings and waterproofing, firefighter films,
(25:54):
among a bunch of other things. And PFASs really became
very prevalent throughout different manufacturing processing. The downside is that
PFAS is really long lasting and bioaccumulating, and we now
have a growing body of scientific research sewing that pfas
can have health impacts, including impacts on raising cholesterol, diminished
(26:15):
antibody responses, and increased likelihood of cancer. As a result,
we have seen increasing government regulation of p fas, and
we've also seen lots of lawsuits against major chemical companies
accusing them of basically polluting water with pfas. So PFAS
is clearly getting a lot more attention these days as
like an emerging contaminant that we now need to create
(26:36):
the technologies to be able to treat.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
So to sum this up, we've tried to talk about
water and water applications supply demand different purification processes in
a very short period of time on this show. We
just barely touched upon it and set the groundwork for
further conversation on this topic. But what I'm hearing from
you is that there are some legacy existing technologies that
(27:00):
have wider use case, and there are emerging technologies that
some of them will be more niche applications, and some
of them will be tackling some of these more prevalent,
increasingly prevalent issues like pfas, and this is a space
that's actively being covered, that there's a lot of innovation
happening at the moment, and that you know, there's certainly
something to watch as we look at this really critically
(27:22):
important resource not only for human survival and agriculture, but
also for the modern world we live in with energy
consumption and AI is that a fair estimation? What did
I miss Stephanie? What is the other takeaway that you
may have from the work that you did delving into
the world of water as it relates to bn F.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Water is one of those things, like I said at
the beginning of the show, we kind of take it
for granted in lots of parts of the world because
it just is available. But as climate change changes that availability,
we shouldn't be taking it for granted. And water is
really useful and really important. It's one of the small
areas of climate tech, but it is one that is
(28:02):
going to play a significant role in the future. And
just to kind of illustrate what I mean by that,
I want to give you an example of like where
I live, because I live in New York City and
we're in the part of the US known for having
plentiful water. We actually get more rain in a year
than London, but we're currently in a moderate drought according
to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and have
been since the fall. And this drought actually led to
(28:24):
us postponing work on the Delaware Aqueduct, which is what
an aqueduct that normally provides ninety percent of my city's
drinking water. It needs repair because it currently leaks about
thirty five million gallons of water a day, but the
drought meant that we had to postpone network. That's an
example of water stress and challenges in a place that
normally isn't water stressed and challenged. So all of this
(28:46):
to say that you'll be hearing more about water as
time goes on.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Something to watch, and thank you Stephanie so much for
coming and is sharing lots of thoughts on how we
should be thinking about water.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Today's episode of Switched On was produced by Cam Gray
with production assistance from Kamala Shelling. Bloomberg NIF is a
service provided by Bloomberg Finance LP and its affiliates. This
recording does not constitute, nor should it be construed as
investment in vice investment recommendations, or a recommendation as to
an investment or other strategy. Bloomberg ANIF should not be
considered as information sufficient upon which to base an investment decision.
(29:29):
Neither Bloomberg Finance LP nor any of its affiliates makes
any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness
of the information contained in this recording, and any liability
as a result of this recording is expressly disclaimed
This is Dana Perkins and you're listening to Switched on,
the podcast brought to you by BNF. Today, we're here
to talk about the existing and emerging technology solutions to
address water stress. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
anywhere between one point five to two point five billion
people live in areas exposed to water stress today. This
(00:23):
is forecasted to rise to three billion by twenty fifty,
and that's only if warming is limited to two degrees
c by that point. Humans are made up of roughly
sixty percent water, so to say that its essential would
be an understatement. And we live on an increasingly thirsty planet,
not just due to population growth and demands from agriculture,
but also owing to increasing demand from industry and data centers. Yes,
(00:47):
the same data centers that are needed to power AI technology.
So where do we get more water? From energy intensive
desalination plants to reducing water loss, to increasing water reuse
and recycling. We'll get into the technology side of this
essential building block for life on this planet. I'm joined
today by b and EF technology and innovation analyst Stephanie Diaz,
(01:10):
who shares findings from her recently released research note titled
tech Radar Water supply use and Treatment. Bn EF clients
will be able to find this at BNOF go on
the Bloomberg terminal or at BNF dot com. All right,
let's get to talking about water. Stephanie, thank you for
(01:35):
joining today.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Thanks for having me, Dana.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
So we're here to talk about water today, and we
know that this has so many important applications in addition
to what we drink and agriculture. But actually, as we
so often talk about in the show, the energy transition
is actually quite dependent upon water. We'll get to the
demand side part of it momentarily, but as we tend
to kick off many of these shows, let's start with
(01:59):
some definitions and then also as we think about the
fact that with climate change there is disruption to traditional
precipitation patterns, what is the definition of water stress?
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Sure, but let's start by actually talking about water itself, right,
because water is really ubiquitous in everyday life. It's really
an amazing thing for a modern miracle that we can
just go to the tap and turn on our water.
But really what that ends up meaning in practice is
that we use an estimated four trillion cubic meters of
water annually. And most of this is coming from things
like rainfall, snowmells, river runoff, and we collect it from
(02:35):
surface water and groundwater, so think lakes, rivers, and aquifers.
These together account for ninety two percent of human water use,
and all of this water gets used in a couple
of different ways. About three quarters of that goes into
the agriculture sector, so think crops, livestock, aquaculture, and then
the remainder gets used for industrial or municipal purposes. So
(02:55):
when we talk about water stress, what we're actually talking
about is does the water demand outpace the supply. This
is a really localized definition because water is a really
regional thing. But what you should think about is between
the water that gets used for human purposes, the water
that needs to be there to in order to replenish rivers,
in order to you know, water forests, be used by
(03:16):
the environment. All of that, does that water demand surpass
the amount of water that is available in that area
for things like precipitation, groundwater, all of that. We are
increasingly seeing that water stress is becoming a pertinent issue
around the world. So today about one point five to
two point five billion people live in areas exposed to
water scarcity, and under a two degrees celsius scenario of
(03:40):
global warming that's expected to rise to approximately three billion
people by twenty fifty, demand for fresh water could be
up to forty percent greater than supply by twenty thirty,
according to the Global Commission on the Economics of Water.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
So now let's pivot to the demand side part of things,
which has to do with this wider question of you know,
water for a lot of the end uses that you know,
we do traditionally talk about here at BNF, Can you
talk about some of the sectors that maybe many we've
thought of or some that we haven't thought of, that
are really heavily dependent upon this natural resource.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Yeah, I mean there are so many examples. Let's talk agriculture.
It's kind of a given that water is important for agriculture,
but we often don't think about this implicit water trade
that is happening in crop production. So, just to give
an example, Fondamonte is an agriculture company and it grows
alfalfa in the US state of Arizona, and that alfalfa
is then harvested and shipped back to Saudi Arabia to
(04:35):
feed cattle there. The company turned to Arizona because of
water scarcity issues in Saudi Arabia and the ability to
grow you around in Arizona, but Arizona itself is a
hot desert state. Water also has implications for the energy sector.
French company EDF had to reduce output of several of
its nuclear power plants in twenty twenty two as heat
waves made the river water that's usually used to cool
(04:57):
those nuclear power plants too warm. They had to reduce
their output as a result. It has impacts on mining
because water is used in querying and milling, and the
amount of water used for those processes can put stress
on local water supplies. In Mexico, Group of Mexicos, Buena
Vista del Cobre Mine dealt with protests in June twenty
twenty four as the company was issued permits entitling it
(05:19):
to more than fifty billion liters of water annually, which
is fifty seven percent of that local watershed's volume, even
though that area is experiencing a regional drought. You have
examples across you know, thermal power plants that use up
to three thousand liters of water per megawat hour for
cooling the steel industry consumes up to one hundred and
seventy five liters of water per ton of steel produce.
(05:40):
Water ends up being used throughout so many of the
different industries that we cover here at BENF, So.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
We could go in so many different directions when we're
thinking about end uses and demand side for water. But
let's focus in on one that has been incredibly buzzy lately,
and that is data centers and the growth of data
centers in some respects to this rise in AI applications
that are really leading to a lot more demand for
(06:07):
electricity in order to keep these data centers cool. Can
you talk about how water is connected to this burgeoning
space right now?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Data centers and AI are actually surprisingly dependent on water
in two ways. So let's talk about the first one,
which is cooling. So think of your laptop. When you
run it for a long period of time, it gets warm, right.
Data centers do the same thing. They get warm over time,
and water based cooling systems are often used in order
to take that heat away from the data centers and
keep them cool. This is a really energy efficient way
(06:38):
to do this, but it does mean that a lot
of water can get consumed in Virginia's Data Center Alley,
which is just outside of Washington, DC. Companies like Amazon
and Microsoft used one point nine billion gallons of water
in twenty twenty three, a sixty four percent increase since
twenty nineteen. The second way in which data centers and
AI are dependent on water is through semiconductors themselves. So
(06:59):
the chips that go into these data centers. In order
to create these chips, you need really pure water, like
ultra pure water. This is water that is so pure
that it would actually kill us humans if we drink it.
But this is the kind of extremely pure water that
is necessary for the chips because they're working on the
scale of nanometers right. In order to produce these sort
of chips, you need access to really clean water, and
(07:22):
as a result, they end up consuming a lot of water.
According to the World Economic Forum, forty percent of semiconductor
manufacturing facilities are in watersheds expected to face severe water
stress between twenty thirty and twenty forty. And now I
want you to add to this another twenty four to
forty percent of facilities that are currently under constructed, and
then another forty percent of facilities that are currently planned
(07:43):
and underway that will also be located in severe water
stress areas. So when taken altogether, you can really see
how data centers ai big technique to be thinking more
about their water usage. A great example of this is
how in Chile recently a court partially reversed approval for
a two hundred million dollars Google data center projects, citing
that the company needed to go back and reconsider its
(08:04):
water use. This is after the data center had already
announced that it was going to switch from water based
cooling to the less water intensive want more energy intensive
air based cooling, and we've seen companies like Microsoft and
AWS commit to being water positive and aiming to replenish
more water than they use by twenty thirty.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
Now, I think a lot of people understand that water
needs to be processed before it can be used, especially
well depending upon where it came from. But can you
just actually explain what ultra pure water is and why
it's deadly for humans.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So water needs to be processed to the level of
purity required for what people what it's being used for.
So take humans. We need to drink clean water, right,
but we actually don't need to drink perfectly pure water
because there's actually useful stuff in water. Water contains minerals
that are one of the ways we get them as
part of like a nutritional basis. If you drink ultra
pure water, it's too pure for our bodies and so
(08:59):
then our red blood cells end up rupturing because the
water wants to like even out the concentration.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
I know this is not related to the energy system,
but I just I had to understand that. Okay. Another
form of water, since we're using this term very colloquially,
is salt water, and desalination is a technology that has
been used in order to remove salt from water to
make it to the level of purity that we can
use it for other use cases. Can you talk about
(09:25):
desalination whether or not that for regions that may be
experiencing water stress, is desalination something that is becoming a
more popular technology.
Speaker 2 (09:34):
Desalination is currently responsible for producing about two percent of
our global water global freshwater, that is, and while it's
only two percent globally, in water stress regions like the
Middle East, it is much higher than that. Saudi Arabia,
for example, relies on desalination for seventy percent of its freshwater,
and Kuwait relies on it for ninety percent of its
(09:55):
fresh water. So desalination can play a massive rule in
specific regions based on how localized that water stress is.
Desalination itself is a really mature technology. We've been doing
this for a long time now. There are currently about
fifteen thousand existing facilities globally that produce ninety five million
cubic meters of fresh water per day, but this is
expected to grow over time. The International Energy Agency expects
(10:20):
that energy demand for desalination is set to double by
twenty thirty from twenty twenty three levels, reaching nearly four
thousand Petta Rules of energy by the end of the decade.
Just to give a sense of scale, that's roughly the
energy consumption of Poland in twenty twenty three. So desalination
is a mature technology and it is definitely widely used
in some parts of the world, but not in all
(10:41):
of the world.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Are there innovations being made in the desalination space or
is it just becoming more prevalent.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Technologies for desalination are getting better. We've seen, for example,
that originally desalination was mostly done through multi stage flash
and multi effect distillation, which are both thermal methods of
removing salt fur water. Basically, the idea there is you
take water salty water, you evaporate it, and the salt
gets left behind, but the water becomes a gas. You
collect the gas and then you condense it so that
(11:07):
you have liquid water. Again. This is a really good
way of creating clean water, but it's also really energy intensive,
and so we saw the switch from these thermal methods
to using reverse osmosis instead. Reverse osmosis accounts for more
than two thirds of desalination capacity around the world today,
and the idea behind reverse osmosis is that you have
a semi permeable membrane and all that means is that
(11:29):
this membrane lets water through but not salt. And so
you push the salty water against this membrane and the
water gets pushed through, but a lot of the salt
stays behind. This is the most common method used today
and partly because it requires less energy to produce that
fresh water. But there are still new methods of desalination
being explored, such as electrodialysis, capacitive deionization, and humidification dehumidification cycling.
(11:54):
The idea behind these newer methods is that they're all
looking for ways to lower the energy demand of desalination
and turn could lower the cost of water production.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
So I'm glad you brought that up. How much does
it cost?
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, so the cheapest desalinated water you can find in
the world would be in Saudi Arabia, where you can
get it at less than fifty cents per cubic meter.
Everywhere else in the world has more expensive desalinated water
than that, and it really depends on things like the
maturity of the industry in that area, the salinity of
the water that you're using in the first place. The
(12:26):
saltier your feed water is, the harder it is to
get the salt out, and therefore the more expensive it is.
Things like the cost of energy and as well as
the pre and post treatment required for that water depending
on its use case.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
So you've just described this process of desalination, which I
fully recognize is one complex into energy intensive and with
that comes costs. So it's a application that is a
you know, if you really need it and you have
access to salt water, you're going to use this. But
let's talk a bit about how people are currently getting water.
(12:58):
And I'm thinking about parts of the world that are
currently under water stress. So the state that I grew
up in is California and produces a ton of food
and also has a lot of periods of water stress
in recent history, a lot of years that would be
classified as droughts. And I know that this is not
unique to California, but there's a lot of conversation about
the water that is in dams and whether or not
(13:20):
to release it at certain points in time. There was
some water recently released. It was being held for agriculture
for it later in the summer for August September, which
is now no longer available. So water stress is coming
to California potentially later this year. Is desalination something that's
on the cards for that part of the world or
other areas where there is water stress, or is this
(13:42):
really somewhat limited use cases at least at this point
in time because of how expensive and complex it is.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Descalination is definitely being considered by more parts of the world. California,
for example, recently released a report on the future of
desalination plants in the state. But you have to remember
that and we're thinking about desalination, we're comparing it to
the alternative, which oftentimes is water that is really really
cheap and oftentimes free. So take for example, if you
(14:09):
are a farmer that depends on groundwater, you have to
pay for a well, you know, install a well that
goes down into the ground, and pay for the pumps,
but the water itself you might not be paying for.
You might not be paying for water that you draw
from a lake for example. So oftentimes one of the
things that we talk about in desalination is we have
to lower the cost of water if we want this
technology to be more competitive, because we're competing against really
(14:33):
cheap access to water in lots of parts of the world.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And then just let's talk about that one drawback other
than the energy intensity, which has to do with increasing
the salinity in wherever it is you're pulling the water from.
If you take out the fresh water but you leave
the salt, what does that do to the local ecosystem.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
Yeah, so reverse osmosis, which as I mentioned is the
most commonly used process today, ends up resulting into two
streams of water. Like you have the fresh water, which
is what you want to go on and use, and
then you have this thing called brine. And this is Basically,
this even saltier water that is left behind. Globally, more
than one hundred and fifty million cubic meters of brine
are produced per day from desalination, which is more than
(15:11):
double the amount of fresh water produced from those same facilities. Now,
this brine can have an impact on the environment. First
of all, it's saltier, which is not what the aquatic
life in oceans are used to. But you can also
have other impacts, such as the temperature being different. That's
why these facilities have to take into account things like
how they disperse this brine into the ocean in order
(15:33):
to try to minimize impacts. They also have to design
their systems so that you know, aquatic life isn't actually
sucked into with the desalination plant in the first place
when they're grabbing the ocean water.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Okay, so there are certainly some drawbacks that one needs
to consider before we revert to wide scale use of
desalination and before we go to the measures that are
being taken to maybe reduce water consumption. So we're being
a little wiser about what it is that we're applying
it to and how we're doing it. Let's just talk
about one other emerging technology. So atmospheric water generation is
(16:05):
seen as an emerging technology. But I'm going to stop
for a minute before you get to well, when you
go to explain what it is, can you also tell
me how this technology differs from the dehumidifier that I
have sucking the water out of my clothes as I'm
drying them on the drying rack.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Oh, sometimes it doesn't actually, So the idea high atmospheric
water generation is that you are taking water vapor from
the air and condensing it, and there are actually a
couple of ways to do that. Some of it is
simple condensation, which is like the seeing technology that is
in your dehumidifier. Actually, sometimes it's instead using a process
called absorption, in which you have basically a solid that
(16:43):
the water then adheres to. Sometimes you have things called bognets,
which are basically inspired by spiderwebs and water drop lists
collect on the strings of these nets and then coalesce together,
creating more water. So atmospheric water generation is actually just
an umbrella term for a couple of different technologies, but
they all aim to collect water from the air instead.
(17:04):
This makes it different from desalination, which you know requires
some sort of large body of salty water nearby. Atmospheric
water generation isn't limited by having access to a body
of water, it's instead thinking about how much humidity is
in the air.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Okay, So now that we've talked about the technologies that
are potentially increasing supply, let's talk about water management and
what can be done to reduce the amount of demand.
You know how much of a role deletes play in pipes.
You know, what are some of the main areas where
we're just losing water needlessly, and what steps are being
taken to ameliorate that.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
In addition to being able to increase these sources of
water that we have, being able to reduce how much
water we need is also incredibly useful, and there are
a couple of ways that we can do this. Let's
start from the utility perspective. Water utilities are often the
way in which water gets distributed in places, and so
we have these large infrastructure networks that manage these large
(18:01):
water flows, covering everything from distributing drinking water to also
storm water management. Now, if we look at just drinking water,
we know that today over three hundred and forty five
million cubic meters of water are lost in distribution daily,
and that's money that is lost by those water utilities
because it's water that they sent out but didn't actually
(18:22):
make it to a customer, so they don't get to
charge their customers for it. But it's also water that
we would rather put to good use. We would rather
not waste that water. You also have things like making
sure that these really large infrastructure systems are operating well.
We can that way, we can find these leaks quickly,
we can manage the equipment well. And so as a result,
we ATF tracked thirty six different companies that are selling
(18:45):
their products to these utilities across those different use cases
around managing their equipment better, finding leaked to connection, being
able to monitor their water quality, all in an effort
to make sure that we use our water more effectively.
These companies have collectively raised two hundred seventy six million
dollars since twenty sixteen, which is admittedly raising money a
little slower than most climate technologies. But that's not to
(19:07):
say that this isn't really useful, because we really need
to make sure that we're using our water as effectively
as possible.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Well, and so then you know, let's talk about agriculture,
which is an application that we I think all kind
of really understand in its basic sense. And you identified
earlier that in some of these use cases, you know,
they are aquifers underground, they have access to them, but
that doesn't mean that it's limitless. Is that the primary
motivation for innovation in reducing water use in agricultural applications
(19:37):
and what are some of the way is that the
agriculture system is actually trying to be a little bit
more cautious about their water consumption.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Yeah. So, as I mentioned earlier, agriculture is the largest
user of fresh water supply, and water stress therefore really
is impactful to this industry. It's whether it's aquifers that
are being drawn down and aren't being replenished by ra water,
whether it's rivers that have so much water being withdrawn
upstream that by the time you a downstream farmer gets
(20:08):
access to the river, it's drier than it would have
been otherwise. Altogether, we're seeing that water stress is increasingly
a challenge that farmers and the agriculture industry have to face.
But it's also one that we it's really important that
we resolved. Irrigation is one of the ways you do
that right, and some nine hundred and thirty five billion
cubic meters of water we're used for irrigation purposes. In
(20:31):
twenty twenty one, irrigated lands account for thirty three percent
of global crop production and forty four percent of cereal
production despite only being twenty four percent of crop lands,
meaning that like they're functuring above their weight, your irrigation
is really important. But climate change is making these water
flows more erratic, and so the agriculture sector is looking
at how they can use water more efficiently, specifically by
(20:55):
thinking about how they can lower the amount of water
they use or time when using that water really well,
so that they can use less water while improving their yield.
The way they do this is through analytics that can
help them better understand things like weather patterns, soil moisture,
better understand where water is being lost on the farm,
(21:15):
and the hope is that they can minimize crop losses
as a result. Just as an example, in the US
since two thousand, drought and high temperatures have been the
primary driver of indemnified crop loss under the US Federal
Crop Insurance Program, responsible for forty three point seven percent
of pavements. So figuring out how to use water really
effectively has significant financial consequences for agriculture.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Okay, so when it comes to water and perhaps recycling
of water, where does the role of gray water come
into this? And water treatment and reuse, which you know
is reducing the amount of what is required because you're
making better use of what you already have.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
Yeah, absolutely thinking about reusing, recycling, and also eventually you
discharge water out into the world. All of that means
that you want to think about water and wastewater treatment.
You want to make sure that the water is still
at a good enough quality for whatever it is your
deal with mix. So if you're trying to recycle water
within your plant, you want to make sure that the
(22:17):
water is still pure enough that it's not going to
damage your equipment. If you are discharging it out into
the environment, you want to make sure that it is
clean enough that you're not running into problems with environmental regulations.
So that means thinking about things like heavy metals, chemicals, microbes.
These are all different types of impurities that can be
found in water, and depending on what that water is
(22:39):
used for, you want to think about what's the concentration
of those impurities that you want in your water. So
water treatment tech is already widely used today, as is
wastewater treatment, and as water stress becomes more salient, we
can expect to see these technologies become more used throughout
the world.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
So as we think about this as a problem that
will affect certain regions more than others, but certainly is global.
Are these solutions and some of these ways of purifying water,
treating water, recycling water, do they have wide scale application
or are these going to be really hyper regional, hyperlocal solutions.
(23:18):
I guess the question I'm asking is how scalable are
the solutions going to be? As people are looking to
tackle water stress worldwide.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
We've already seen how water tech can be widely adopted.
Take drinking water right, We around the world have parts
of the world which have really good access to drinking
water because we've done a good job of building the
infrastructure required to treat that drinking water. Access to clean
water has expanded significantly over the last two decades, although
we still have large portions of Oceana and Sub Saharan
(23:47):
Africa that remain without access to it. Wastewater treatment is
also widespread. Now there are over fifty thousand municipally operated
wastewater treatment plants around the world globally, and we can
expect to see that increase as more places adopt wastewater regulations. However,
it should be noted that when I say water treatment
(24:08):
tech that encompasses so many things, there are over one
hundred different technologies that I am subtly referencing in that,
and that's because water can just be so different. The
water that comes out of a pulp and paper manufacturing
facility is different from the water that comes out of
a steel facility, is different from the water that comes
out of my apartment, for example. So there is plenty
(24:31):
of opportunity for water tech to grow an adoption, though
exactly what type of technology it's actually a little bit
more specific than that, and not everything works in every circumstance.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, So while we're talking about, you know, trying to
apply some industrial processes to improve water quality for some
of the broader use cases, there are going to be
lots of different use cases that are going to need
to emerge and have this water tech that you're speaking about.
So let's go into one of those more specific cases,
which has to do with purifying water and these You know, well,
(25:02):
there's a lot of discussion about forever chemicals and human
consumption and how food water is carrying some of these
things at the moment. So PFAS, which stands for I
don't even think I can say this out loud, what
does PFAST stand for?
Speaker 2 (25:15):
I was, well, I was looking at that. I was like,
oh god, I have to power and polyfloral alkyl substances.
Speaker 1 (25:20):
Right, So this term, First of all, what a PFAS?
Why should we be concerned? And then on the more
optimistic side, what is happening in water tech to reduce
p FAST in our water?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yes? So p FAS is an umbrella term for thousands
of different synthetic chemicals. So basically, I want you to
think of a nice little hydrocarbon chain and we're going
to pop off some of those hydrogen atoms and attach
multiple fluorine atoms instead. This gives it the property where
it can be used in nonstick coatings and waterproofing, firefighter films,
(25:54):
among a bunch of other things. And PFASs really became
very prevalent throughout different manufacturing processing. The downside is that
PFAS is really long lasting and bioaccumulating, and we now
have a growing body of scientific research sewing that pfas
can have health impacts, including impacts on raising cholesterol, diminished
(26:15):
antibody responses, and increased likelihood of cancer. As a result,
we have seen increasing government regulation of p fas, and
we've also seen lots of lawsuits against major chemical companies
accusing them of basically polluting water with pfas. So PFAS
is clearly getting a lot more attention these days as
like an emerging contaminant that we now need to create
(26:36):
the technologies to be able to treat.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
So to sum this up, we've tried to talk about
water and water applications supply demand different purification processes in
a very short period of time on this show. We
just barely touched upon it and set the groundwork for
further conversation on this topic. But what I'm hearing from
you is that there are some legacy existing technologies that
(27:00):
have wider use case, and there are emerging technologies that
some of them will be more niche applications, and some
of them will be tackling some of these more prevalent,
increasingly prevalent issues like pfas, and this is a space
that's actively being covered, that there's a lot of innovation
happening at the moment, and that you know, there's certainly
something to watch as we look at this really critically
(27:22):
important resource not only for human survival and agriculture, but
also for the modern world we live in with energy
consumption and AI is that a fair estimation? What did
I miss Stephanie? What is the other takeaway that you
may have from the work that you did delving into
the world of water as it relates to bn F.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
Water is one of those things, like I said at
the beginning of the show, we kind of take it
for granted in lots of parts of the world because
it just is available. But as climate change changes that availability,
we shouldn't be taking it for granted. And water is
really useful and really important. It's one of the small
areas of climate tech, but it is one that is
(28:02):
going to play a significant role in the future. And
just to kind of illustrate what I mean by that,
I want to give you an example of like where
I live, because I live in New York City and
we're in the part of the US known for having
plentiful water. We actually get more rain in a year
than London, but we're currently in a moderate drought according
to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and have
been since the fall. And this drought actually led to
(28:24):
us postponing work on the Delaware Aqueduct, which is what
an aqueduct that normally provides ninety percent of my city's
drinking water. It needs repair because it currently leaks about
thirty five million gallons of water a day, but the
drought meant that we had to postpone network. That's an
example of water stress and challenges in a place that
normally isn't water stressed and challenged. So all of this
(28:46):
to say that you'll be hearing more about water as
time goes on.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Something to watch, and thank you Stephanie so much for
coming and is sharing lots of thoughts on how we
should be thinking about water.
Speaker 2 (28:56):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (29:06):
Today's episode of Switched On was produced by Cam Gray
with production assistance from Kamala Shelling. Bloomberg NIF is a
service provided by Bloomberg Finance LP and its affiliates. This
recording does not constitute, nor should it be construed as
investment in vice investment recommendations, or a recommendation as to
an investment or other strategy. Bloomberg ANIF should not be
considered as information sufficient upon which to base an investment decision.
(29:29):
Neither Bloomberg Finance LP nor any of its affiliates makes
any representation or warranty as to the accuracy or completeness
of the information contained in this recording, and any liability
as a result of this recording is expressly disclaimed
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