Water is Not the New Oil

"Water, water, everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink." -- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

We've all heard or read that "water is the new oil," a phrase that is often deployed as a pundit's shorthand for some market prediction. Drinking water, we are told by analysts and environmentalists, is a rare, finite resource of which the world's supply is rapidly dwindling. It's just like oil.

Well, it's not.

Water, water everywhere

1. Oil gets used up, but water is inherently reusable

We burn oil to make our cars go, or we make it into plastics, which will never change back into oil. Water, on the other hand, spends just a few hours in our bodies before we return it, unchanged on a molecular level, back to the environment. In most cases, agricultural or industrial uses for water (which account for a far greater proportion of its use than personal consumption) also return it to the environment largely unscathed. Water is inherently reusable; it is up to humans, as a species, to ensure we don't return it in such a polluted state that reusing the water becomes impractical.

2. Unlike oil, our planet has a huge stock of water, at locations that are largely known

Most of our planet's surface is covered in water. Deep sea drilling and exploration are not required for water. True, most of that is seawater, but current desalination technology can already convert that to drinkable water at a commercially reasonable price (several times less than what many consumers already pay for their drinking water).

3. Even fresh water, almost ready to drink, is quite abundant

Freshwater resources account for just one percent to two percent of Earth's water (depending on what you count as a potential resource), but that's still a huge amount, many times greater than what the human population consumes yearly. The best indicator of how much fresh water we can sustainably use is the rate at which freshwater resources are replenished by precipitation (any freshwater sources, like lakes, rivers, or aquifers, are just buffers we can draw from, but ultimately are refilled from precipitation, or via channels passing precipitation water back to the ocean). That figure is around 1014m3 per year, which is four times the human population's current water use. That's not so big as to make human consumption a drop in the ocean, so to speak, but it does mean any water stress we have is not because 'there isn't enough to go around.'

4. No substitution

There's no "renewable energy" analog in the water market. You can use water more efficiently, but you can't really phase it out in favor of some alternative. Our bodies, our food crops, and often our industrial uses, just can't go without water. On the plus side, water does not pollute the environment, and is returned to the environment in the same molecular form (although we frequently discharge it with a whole lot of pollutants added).

5. Water is a local market

Like energy, water is consumed everywhere. But whereas energy sources, such as oil, can profitably be traded across the world, from oil-rich nations to oil-poor nations, water is just too bulky (or, equivalently, too cheap per volume) to be transported cost-effectively, and thus it can't be a truly global commodity. In some water-stressed areas, transboundary water trade is emerging and makes sense, but this is nothing like global trade on the intercontinental scale that is seen in oil markets. Water technology and methodology still can (and should) be global, but water markets will remain local.

Nor any drop to drink

Does this mean water scarcity is not a problem? Of course not. Indeed, in much of the developing world, access to safe drinking water is one of life's great difficulties; this problem will soon threaten most of the world's population. Even in many European and U.S. cities, water resources are stressed, and the rate of depletion of aquifers and other "buffer" sources indicates an expected shortage within a couple of decades. But to say that we are "running out of water" is a dangerous oversimplification, and the oil analogy makes it sound like we now need to go prospecting for new (and expensive) sources of water.

The real reasons much of the world is now or is in danger of becoming water-stressed are more subtle. Many water sources are difficult to access, tap, and transport water from. Water withdrawal is multiplied many times by wasteful consumption, inefficient transport and distribution (water loss in distribution systems, e.g. through leaky and burst pipes, is estimated at 25% worldwide to 50% or more in the developing world), poor reuse/recharging strategies, and indiscriminate pollution of water sources.

Every drop counts

So, what can we do? We need to keep the total water withdrawal rate down. More often than not, the answers are simple, but require smart solutions to implement.

1. Use less water

The U.S. consumes twice as much water per capita as Europe does, for a similar standard of living. Consumers in parts of the U.S. and some other countries are typically charged an unrealistically low price marginal price for their excess water use (often far below the total cost to procure more water sustainably), so there is no disincentive to help curb such waste. The issue of raising those prices is often a political minefield, and the local nature of the water market means that tenfold differences in water prices between countries are neither surprising, nor a transient condition, although the best-practice cost to supply that water may be identical. The AWE is fighting hard to promote efficient water use in the U.S., and other, more efficient countries could still do much better. If we used half as much water, it would be as good (or better!) as doubling our water resources.

2. Reuse water

By polluting less water, treating, and recycling it, the same water can be reused several times along the water cycle, either directly, or indirectly by being recharged into groundwater or river water, from where it is eventually pumped out and used. This is like multiplying the water available from precipitation. Reuse can often require little or no water treatment, e.g., when greywater is used for irrigation. The vast majority of water is used for agriculture and industry, applications that can often use lower-quality water. If we reused every liter of water even once, that would be like doubling our water resources.

3. Tap more sources

OK, that's the obvious one. The important thing, perhaps, is to add the adjective "responsibly." Pumping water from lakes and aquifers faster than they are naturally replenished may at best be considered a loan from the environment. Sustained withdrawal from such sources can lower water levels, causing dangerous pollution, and of course can only be a time-limited solution until the stored water buffer is depleted. Freshwater sources must also supply sufficient water for existing ecosystems, after net human consumption.

4. Transport and distribute water more efficiently

Leaky pipes account for a significant proportion of the total water withdrawn globally. Just cutting down on that lost water (which is a big part of TaKaDu's offering) would save us -- among other things -- a substantial fraction of total water demand, which today is simply lost and returned to the environment. In much of the developing world, this could more than halve the demand placed on freshwater resources.

5. Desalinate

Earth's water cycle imposes a hard limit on the fresh water we can sustainably extract from the environment. As mentioned, the human population already appropriates a sizable fraction of that. With the actions listed above, we may improve that ratio five- or tenfold. But with the combination of population growth, and the need to close today's water gap in much of the developing world, not to mention the unequal geographical distribution of easily accessible freshwater sources, that hard limit will remain too close for comfort for anyone taking the longer view. The prospect of 100% efficient closed-loop water recycling is still a long way off, and may never be economically viable. Cheap desalination (as Israel has realized, for instance) is the only way to increase our total water sources, and seems like an eventual necessity.

Oil and water

It's not so much access to water sources or ownership of those sources that will prove crucial (and make big business, the way ownership of oil has), but the technology and methods we use to ensure adequate water supply. We can move away from oil and oil technology -- and we'll have to, quite soon -- but water is here to stay. For all the wrong reasons, water stress is felt or is beginning to be felt throughout the world. "New oil" or not, we should be giving it our very best effort.