Reducing Your Water Footprint Saves Energy

The companies we work with often ask us to translate their water savings into energy and CO2 emission savings. To do so, we use the following ratios, which have been reported by the EPA and DOE, respectively:

1 gallon of water = 4 watt hours of power
1 kWh = 1.34 pounds of CO2

So, 1 million gallons of water conserved prevents the emission of 5,360 pounds of carbon dioxide.

- Sharon Thompson, Vice President, Marketing, HydroPoint

Webcast: Jack in the Box Reduces Water Footprint

HydroPoint presents the following free webcast event as part of the company's Sustainability 2.0 educational series:

Case Study: Jack in the Box Reduces Water Footprint

January 16, 2009, 2 PM Eastern (11 AM Pacific)

Greg Sutton, Operations Manager, Corporate Facilities, Jack in the Box, Inc., and Jeff Foote, Director of Environment and Water Resources for The Coca-Cola Company, will share effective strategies for cutting costs by reducing water footprint.

Register online

Domestic Water Rate Survey

See this survey of water rates from cities around the country here.

Anheuser-Busch Cuts Water Use Ratio 4.4%

From Environmental Leader

Anheuser-Busch released its 2007 corporate social responsibility report (PDF) and reported that its breweries reduced their water use ratio by 4.4 percent and have set a 2010 stretch goal of 4 hectoliters of water per hectoliter of beer packaged. The company reported that it has returned on average more than 70 percent of the total water used at the breweries back to local watersheds. More >>

Arizona's water and power supplies intertwined

The Arizona Republic
By Shaun McKinnon

But changing a light bulb and soaping up faster are not separate acts. Energy and water are tightly connected, each requiring copious amounts of the other and each increasingly vulnerable to volatile supplies of the other. The connection is even more pronounced in Arizona and the wide-open West, where moving water where it's needed, often uphill, consumes enough power to light whole cities. More >>

Climate change, drought to strain Colorado River

Sign On San Diego
By Mike Stark

Seven Western states will face more water shortages in the years ahead as climate change exacerbates the strains drought and a growing population have put on the Colorado River, scientists say. Read the story >>

How to Make the Drought in the South Pay

From BusinessWeek
By Jeremy Quittner

Walking through a soybean field in rural Georgia's Flint River Basin, it's easy to overlook a blue dome the size and shape of a police car siren sitting in the brown-red loamy soil. But thanks to a number of aggressive small companies, that dome is at the center of rapid change in the Southeast, where entrepreneurs are tackling a drought that's said to be the worst the region has seen in 100 years. Today, areas of serious drought stretch from Tennessee and the Carolinas to Kentucky and Virginia, Alabama and Georgia. More >>

Save water, save energy, save money, save manpower

By Harry Fuller
GreenTech Pastures, ZDNet.com

Moving water around uses a lot of energy in the United States and many other agricultural nations. A Petaluma, California, firm is selling digital control systems that can save both water and the energy needed to move it about. The company is HydroPoint. The product is called Weathertrak.

I recently spoke with their President and CEO, Paul Ciandrini.

He explained the components of their system. HydroPoint has seven software patents for a system that calculates eighteen variables for any irrigation or outdoor water use system. Things like weather, soil type, grade or slope, amount of shade, crop or plant varieties. Using real-time weather data from the many thousands of U.S. weather stations plus data on the specific local conditions of the customer’s landscape can yield a set of projections on how much water is needed. The data is analyzed by Weathertrak algorithms, then directions are sent wirelessly via regular cell phone frequencies to the specific irrigation system controller. Caindrini explains the system works by calculating evapotranspiration per square kilometer and has a dependable moisture replenishment model. More >>>

Water Neutral: Is the Latest Eco-Term Just Corporate Hype?

AlterNet
By Jeff Conant

In early 2008, the Coca-Cola Company began making public claims that it would become "the most efficient company in the world in terms of water use in the beverage industry." Central to the company's PR campaign is the claim that it is working toward the goal of becoming "water neutral." More >>