Energy
Towards better management of water for energy and energy for water! Water and energy, two fast-growing sectors, are essential to each other. After agriculture, the energy sector is the world's second largest user of water: hydroelectric production, cooling of thermal power stations, extraction and refining of oil and gas products... In turn, energy is essential to the entire water usage cycle: extraction, transport and treatment. Despite their strong interdependence, the international community currently lacks a shared framework for analyzing the interactions between energy and water. A better integration of energy and water management policies would, however, be necessary in situations of vulnerability generated by this interdependence.
Objectives
In this context, the members of the French Water Partnership are mobilizing for an integrated approach to both the water and energy sectors, with a view to sustainable development. Their recommendations are as follows:
- Promote coherence between sectoral water and energy policies, through relevant planning and the creation of governance bodies at basin level involving all stakeholders and integrating the challenges of drinking water supply and sanitation and energy, but also ecosystems, agriculture, tourism … ;
- Promote rationalization of water requirements (both quantity and quality) for the energy sector (water footprint) and energy requirements for the water sector (energy efficiency), through effective monitoring;
- Develop sustainable hydroelectricity, integrating different uses and enabling all these uses to be concertedly optimized.