Congressional Hearings
THE ENERGY WATER NEXUS: DRIER WATTS AND CHEAPER DROPS
Congressional Hearings
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| hssy00 | H | S | Committee on Science, Space, and Technology |
[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
THE ENERGY WATER NEXUS:
DRIER WATTS AND CHEAPER DROPS
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 7, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-5
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
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35-403PDF WASHINGTON : 2019
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Ranking Member
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon MO BROOKS, Alabama
AMI BERA, California, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania BRIAN BABIN, Texas
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma NEAL DUNN, Florida
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
BRAD SHERMAN, California MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
JERRY McNERNEY, California PETE OLSON, Texas
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
PAUL TONKO, New York MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
BILL FOSTER, Illinois JIM BAIRD, Indiana
DON BEYER, Virginia VACANCY
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida VACANCY
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois
KATIE HILL, California
BEN McADAMS, Utah
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
------
Subcommittee on Energy
HON. CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania, Chairman
DANIEL LIPINKSI, Illinois RANDY WEBER, Texas, Ranking Member
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan NEAL DUNN, Florida
KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
JERRY McNERNEY, California MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
March 7, 2019
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Conor Lamb, Chairman, Subcommittee on
Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House
of Representatives............................................. 6
Written Statement............................................ 8
Statement by Representative Randy Weber, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Energy, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 12
Written Statement............................................ 14
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 16
Written Statement............................................ 17
Statement by Representative Frank D. Lucas, Ranking Member,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 20
Written Statement............................................ 21
Witnesses:
Dr. Vincent Tidwell, Principle Member of the Technical Staff at
Sandia National Laboratories
Oral Statement............................................... 24
Written Statement............................................ 27
Kate Zerrenner, Senior Manager at Environmental Defense Fund
Oral Statement............................................... 32
Written Statement............................................ 34
Dr. Richard Bonner, Vice President of Research and Development at
Advanced Cooling Technologies
Oral Statement............................................... 43
Written Statement............................................ 45
Dr. Ramen P. Singh, Associate Dean for Engineering at OSU-Tulsa,
and Professor and Head of the School of Materials Science and
Engineering at Oklahoma State University
Oral Statement............................................... 49
Written Statement............................................ 50
Dr. Michael E. Webber, Chief Science and Technology Officer at
ENGIE
Oral Statement............................................... 54
Written Statement............................................ 57
Discussion....................................................... 63
THE ENERGY WATER NEXUS:
DRIER WATTS AND CHEAPER DROPS
----------
THURSDAY, MARCH 7, 2019
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Conor Lamb
[Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. This hearing will come to order. Without
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any
time.
Good morning. Welcome to today's hearing titled, ``The
Energy Water Nexus: Drier Watts and Cheaper Drops.'' I'd like
to thank our panel of witnesses for being here today. I'd also
like to thank both Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas
for introducing the Energy and Water Research Integration Act
of 2019, which addresses the energy-water nexus issues that
we'll be discussing today. I think it is tremendous that our
Committee's leadership has started this year off with a major
piece of legislation that is bipartisan, and I commend them for
that.
The connection between energy and water is indisputable. It
takes a lot of water to produce energy and a lot of energy to
produce clean water. Large-scale power plants mainly use water
as a cooling source. I've seen this back home. We have a
nuclear power plant and a coal-fired power plant right next to
each other in my district that use a lot of water on the Ohio
River. A substantial amount of this is used to produce other
common fuel sources like oil and gas, which produces a lot of
wastewater, also a significant issue in western Pennsylvania
where I'm from where we have a lot of natural gas drilling
taking place.
The Energy and Water Research Integration Act of 2019 aims
to decrease energy and water intensity when we use these
resources by integrating water production use and treatment
considerations throughout DOE's (Department of Energy's) R&D
(research and development) programs. Reducing the water
intensity of energy and the energy intensity of water
production will help our environment and, most importantly, it
should decrease the utility bills for our people back home.
This is not a new field of research. Congress instructed
DOE to create a program to address this back in 2005 with the
Energy Policy Act, and in 2012 the Department created the
Energy-Water Nexus Crosscut team. This created a plan for
future work in research at DOE. They have held a series of
roundtable discussions, including some with the witnesses who
are here today, and we thank you for filling us in on those.
Unfortunately, this team was disbanded at the beginning of this
Administration.
The Administration has recently launched an initiative that
focuses on water production and announced two new funding
opportunities for desalination, but these are only some
components of I think the overall nexus that we need to be
addressing.
So restoring a focus to this connection we view as crucial.
Global energy consumption and water demand will continue to go
up and likely will for decades into the future. This is
exacerbated by climate change, meaning it's going to get worse
and more difficult to solve, which is why I think we need a
whole-of-government and of course bipartisan approach on this.
The relationship between energy and water we also know is
very specific to particular regions. In the west when
temperatures are high, water use for cooling power plants is
much less efficient or not even available when there are severe
droughts. Sea-level rise affects the water sources along the
coast, increasing the need for energy-efficient water treatment
capabilities. Weather can affect the demand for energy like
extreme winter weather events experienced back home in my
district where we have plenty of water but often have some very
cold temperatures. This threatens both the energy and water
infrastructure.
So efficiency measures would help mitigate all of these
problems, and that's where our discussion will focus today. We
are going to look at the nexus between energy and water, but
also talk about some solutions that are innovative. One of the
witnesses we have here today, Dr. Richard Bonner, has led many
projects related to water use and energy production at a small
business in my home State of Pennsylvania, so I will use my
prerogative to welcome you, Dr. Bonner, as a fellow
Pennsylvanian. We're thrilled to have you here. His projects
have been funded through various government programs such as
ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy), which we
view as a program that's vital to our energy research and
development. We need more innovative projects like yours in
this field, and we all look forward to your testimony.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Lamb follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. And now the Chair recognizes my Republican
colleague and friend, Mr. Weber, for an opening statement.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Today, we will hear from a panel of experts on the
challenges in the U.S. energy-water nexus and discuss the
Department of Energy's (DOE) role in enabling fundamental
research and development in support of these critical
resources.
A sustainable supply of both energy and water is essential
to the maintenance of U.S. economic health, environmental
stability, and national security. Water is needed to produce
energy, and energy is required to extract, treat, and transport
water. This fundamental and tightly intertwined relationship is
often referred to as the energy-water nexus. We see the energy-
water nexus at work in the production of fossil fuels and
biofuels, and in the functioning of thermoelectric power plants
across our great country.
Historically, energy and water systems in the United States
have been planned and managed separately. Today, it is clear
that no matter what the future cross-section of the U.S. energy
market looks like or will look like, we will need to develop an
integrated approach to these two systems. A number of Federal
agencies have supported research and development efforts
related to the energy-water nexus, including the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of the Interior (DOI),
and the Department of Energy (DOE).
With its strong expertise in energy technologies and world-
leading, I might add, fundamental science capabilities, DOE is
uniquely suited to lead the national energy-water nexus
conversation. The Department enables high level use-inspired
basic research that supports our understanding of today's
evolving energy-water nexus throughout its national laboratory
system.
At the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (N-REL), DOE
funds research into a wide portfolio of advanced technology
solutions to today's energy-water nexus concerns, including
desalination using renewable energy technologies and the
reduction of water needs for solar technologies.
At the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), DOE
funds research in advanced cooling and water treatment
technologies, nontraditional water use, and modeling tools to
evaluate the impact of fossil energy development on both
surface and subsurface water resources.
And at Sandia National Laboratories--you all have heard of
that, right? At Sandia National Laboratories researchers are
focused on creating new water supplies using advanced
technologies. Sandia also supports research that develops and
provides decisionmaking tools to U.S. institutions that control
the supply and demand of both water and energy.
Recently, the Trump Administration has taken a number of
steps to prioritize research in the energy-water nexus. In
October 2018, Secretary Rick Perry announced the launch of a
DOE-led Water Security Grand Challenge, which will incentivize
the development of new technologies to address critical U.S.
water security challenges.
Then in December, DOE announced $100 million in funding for
an Energy-Water Desalination Hub focused on early stage
research and development. This hub will explore nontraditional
water sources and provide desalination technologies that are
both cost-competitive and energy-efficient.
I want to thank the Chairman for holding this hearing today
and the witnesses for providing their testimony, and I'm
looking forward to learning more about this important research
in our hearing today.
Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Weber follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. And the Chair now recognizes
Chairwoman Johnson for an opening statement.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And
good morning and welcome to our witnesses.
I'm delighted that we're holding this hearing--it's very
timely--to bring attention to the interplay between water, one
of our most valuable natural resources, and our energy systems.
Our energy and water systems are intrinsically interconnected.
Not only does energy play an important role in the extraction,
treatment, and transportation of water, but water is also used
in many stages and types of electricity generation.
In my home State of Texas, we face a multitude of issues at
the energy-water nexus, for example, large amounts of water are
used during the process of fracking for oil and gas extraction.
However, the needs of the large oil and gas industry can be at
odds with the needs of the agricultural community, where
farmers struggle to conserve water and energy to save costs,
especially in the face of increasingly extreme droughts in the
State. Of course, water is an important resource for energy and
agriculture, but it's also critically important for the people.
My own city of Dallas, which is inland, is the fastest-
growing metropolitan area in the United States, which puts a
strain on our already limited water resources in the State.
Moreover, all of these issues are exacerbated by our rapidly
changing climate. These days, we regularly withstand harsh
droughts, extreme heat, hurricanes, and wildfires. This uptick
is extreme--in extreme weather events is causing water, food,
and energy insecurity, which only increases the urgency with
which we must act.
For these reasons, I have been working for many years in
Congress to address this important issue through my work in
developing the Energy and Water Resource Integration Act. This
Congress, I reintroduced that bipartisan bill with my colleague
and friend Ranking Member of the Full Committee, Lucas. It
instructs the Department of Energy to incorporate the
consideration of water use and treatment into all of its
relevant research, development, and demonstration programs, and
to establish additional coordination functions to ensure that
we are giving this issue adequate attention and resources
moving forward.
I want to thank you, Mr. Lamb, for convening this panel.
I'm very pleased to see the strong representation of witnesses,
and especially from Texas today. I look forward to having a
robust discussion and I--as I complete my statement, I will say
that I do have to attend a Subcommittee on Water in the
Transportation Committee, so I will dip out in a little bit.
Thank you, and I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
And the Chair now recognizes Ranking Member Lucas for an
opening statement.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairman Lamb, for holding this
hearing today, and thank you to our witnesses for being here.
There might not be two more important and interconnected
pieces in our daily health and economic stability than water
and energy. Water is used to produce energy, and energy is
required to treat and distribute clean water. Both are
essential, and both depend on the other.
That is why this Congress I joined my colleague, Chairwoman
Johnson, in introducing H.R. 34, the Energy and Water Research
Integration Act, which will be the subject of today's hearing.
This bill will improve our understanding of the relationship
between water use and energy production while encouraging the
development of innovative technologies that could improve
efficiency and production in both sectors.
It's important to remember that many of the issues
surrounding the energy-water nexus are regional and so require
consideration of local factors. For example, in Oklahoma
agriculture is clearly a third part of the relationship. While
agriculture is the single largest consumer of water, it is also
a critical piece of the national economy and contributes
indirectly to the energy sector through the production of
biofuels.
Additionally, oil and gas operations, especially horizontal
drilling and hydraulic fracking, which are vital in the pursuit
of cleaner energy markets, require large volumes of water and
can also produce water. While this presents localized water
treatment challenges, it also leads to opportunities for
beneficial reuse of water through fluid lifecycle management.
Today, Raman Singh will provide--Doctor I should say--Raman
Singh will provide a valuable perspective from the research
community on ways to improve water management and energy
efficiency by developing carbon- and water-neutral fossil
energy technologies. I look forward to hearing how his
collaborative multi-university effort, led by Oklahoma State,
can conduct transformative research while working with industry
to safely implement new approaches to the field. This research
can also complement the work being conducted at our national
labs.
I'm pleased to see DOE pursuing work in this area, both
through the multi-agency Water Security Grand Challenge and the
recently announced DOE Energy-Water Desalination Hub. By
focusing on early stage R&D, this hub will work to develop
novel filtration membranes that can transform brackish or
produced water into water communities can reuse. Because of the
complex relationship between energy and water systems, this
challenge will require a multi-disciplinary approach.
Interactions between chemists, engineers, geologists,
legislators, and others will be required, along with
collaboration between government, industry, and universities. I
believe the legislation introduced by Chairwoman Johnson and
myself can help to streamline and prioritize this work.
I thank our witnesses for being here today, and I look
forward to our discussion this morning. And with that, I yield
back, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you, sir.
If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
point.
Now, I'd like to introduce our witnesses. First, we have
Dr. Vincent Tidwell, who is a Distinguished Member of the
Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories. Dr. Tidwell
has more than 20 years of experience conducting and managing
research on basic and applied projects in water resource
management, nuclear and hazardous waste storage and
remediation, and collaborative modeling. Currently, he is
leading several studies that address issues concerning the
energy-water nexus, including support for long-term
transmission planning in the western and Texas
interconnections, climate impacts on energy-water relations,
and international energy-water pinch points. Dr. Tidwell was a
lead author for the Land, Water, Energy cross-sectoral chapter
of the 2014 National Climate Assessment.
Ms. Kate Zerrenner--did I get that right?
Ms. Zerrenner. Close enough.
Chairman Lamb. Close enough. I'm sorry about that. Is a
Senior Manager at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Ms.
Zerrenner leads EDF's Texas--can you just say it so that I make
sure I get it right?
Ms. Zerrenner. Zerrenner.
Chairman Lamb. Zerrenner, thank you. Ms. Zerrenner leads
EDF's Texas and national energy-water nexus efforts and
develops and implements strategies to promote energy and water
efficiency in Texas. Her work aims to address financial,
regulatory, and behavioral barriers to advancing clean energy
options that reduce climate change impacts, water intensity,
and air pollution.
Prior to joining EDF, Ms. Zerrenner worked at the U.S.
Government Accountability Office analyzing U.S. action on
climate change and the voluntary carbon offset market, SAIC, on
climate change projects for the U.S. Department of Energy and
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S.
Department of Energy.
Dr. Richard Bonner is the Vice President of Research and
Development of Advanced Cooling Technologies. Dr. Bonner has
led research programs involving the thermal and fluid sciences,
including several programs related to the energy-water nexus.
He has published more than 45 papers, one patent, and four
patent applications. Dr. Bonner has also led advanced thermal
projects development programs from concept to production for
over 125 customers covering a wide range of commercial
industries.
We also have Dr. Michael Webber, who's based in Paris,
France, where he serves as the Chief Science and Technology
Officer at ENGIE, a global energy and infrastructure services
company. Dr. Webber is also the Josey Centennial Professor in
energy resources and Professor of mechanical engineering at,
you guessed it, the University of Texas at Austin. There's a
heavy Texas imprint on our hearing today. Mr. Ranking Member,
if I didn't know any better, I would suspect a conspiracy was
afoot. But we do have a Pennsylvanian on the panel, so I know
we're safe.
Mr. Weber. Yes, but he spells his name wrong.
Chairman Lamb. Dr. Webber is the author of Thirst for
Power: Energy, Water, and Human Survival published in 2016.
We're guessing he picked up the second B somewhere in Paris
probably, and then that switch to Texas is where it falls off.
The Chair now recognizes Ranking Member Lucas for the
introduction of our final witness.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairman.
It is with great pleasure I introduce one of my
constituents as our witness today, Dr. Raman Singh. He holds a
number of academic positions, including Associate Dean of
Engineering at Oklahoma State-Tulsa; Head of the School of
Materials Science and Engineering at the College of
Engineering, Architecture, and Technology at Oklahoma State
University (OSU); and the Director of the Helmerich Advanced
Technology Research Center at OSU-Tulsa campus.
His research has been funded by the National Science
Foundation, NASA (National Aeronautics and Space
Administration), the Oklahoma Center for Advancement of Science
and Technology, the Oklahoma Transportation Commission, the
U.S. Army Research Office, the Department of Energy, and
industry. And prior to joining OSU, Dr. Singh was a
postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology,
a faculty member of the State University of New York at Stony
Brook. Dr. Singh holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical
engineering and applied mechanics, both from the University of
Rhode Island, and a bachelor of technology degree in mechanical
engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology.
Thank you, Dr. Singh, for both being at Oklahoma State and
being here with us today. And I yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you, Ranking Member.
As our witnesses should know, you will each have 5 minutes
for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be
included in the record for the hearing. When you all have
completed your spoken testimony, we will begin with questions.
Each Member will have 5 minutes to question the panel.
We will start with Dr. Tidwell.
TESTIMONY OF DR. VINCENT TIDWELL,
DISTINGUISHED MEMBER OF THE TECHNICAL STAFF,
SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES
Dr. Tidwell. Chairman Lamb, Ranking Member Weber, and
distinguished Members of the Committee, I thank you for this
opportunity to testify here before you this morning on this
critical issue of energy and water nexus. Again, my name's
Vincent Tidwell, and I'm with Sandia National Laboratories.
I want to start on a personal note as I had the opportunity
to view the energy-water nexus firsthand. This past week while
I was on vacation I traveled from Albuquerque, New Mexico to
Park city, Utah. And on this trip I crossed the San Juan, the
Colorado, and the Green Rivers, along with the Rio Grande. I
also passed numerous power plants, hydropower dams, oil and gas
plays and coal mines. The relation between these important
resources was evident. Equally evident was the critical role
these resources play in the economy, livelihood, culture, and
environment of the communities that they serve. These resources
are our heritage, so thank you for your concern and interest in
securing these resources for generations to come.
There are three points I'd like to make this morning. First
is a challenge. Energy-water nexus is expressed in varied ways
that often depend on location. Second is an opportunity. We can
manage the nexus through integrated planning involving
coordinated action between water and energy managers. My third
point again highlights an opportunity, in this case, to harness
the deep expertise of our national laboratories, academia,
industry, and other Federal agencies to develop advanced water
treatment technologies to make new sources of water available
at competitive costs.
To my first point, place really matters when it comes to
the energy-water nexus. For example, in the west we've had
difficulty in siting new power plants due to limited water
supply. While in the east, we have had problems in times of
drought with existing power plants having to operate
differently due not to limited water supply but because of
elevated water temperatures. Drought affects hydropower
everywhere, but it's a particular issue in the northwest where
hydropower counts for over 60 percent of all generation
capacity.
On the other end of the spectrum we see penetration of wind
in the plains States and solar in the southwest, which has
drastically changed and reduced our energy-water burden in
these regions. This variation simply reflects the geographic
differences in our energy, water, and climate systems,
underscoring the need for deep understanding of these linkages
with broad nationwide participation.
To my second point, integrated planning provides an
important platform for managing the nexus. As a personal
example, I've led a team of researchers, including my colleague
Dr. Webber to bring State water managers together with energy
managers from the Nation's three interconnections to help
integrate water into their long-term transmission planning,
specifically identifying where water might limit the siting of
new thermoelectric power generation or where drought might
impact the operations of existing power plants or hydropower
assets.
Beyond integrated resource planning, though, we need to
integrate waste stream management. Significant quantities of
water and energy are required to manage waste, including
emissions scrubbers, carbon capture systems, and produced water
management. But we don't have to consider these as waste as new
technologies are emerging to extract value from these streams
such as latent heat, biogas, potable water, and commercial
chemicals.
My final point again addresses an opportunity, that of
advanced water treatment technology. In 1961 President Kennedy
said if ``we could ever competitively at a cheap rate get fresh
water from salt water, it would be in the long-range interest
of humanity, which would really dwarf any other scientific
accomplishment.'' Today, there are over 18,000 desalination
plants and operations around the world, but desalination is
still not cheap. Why? The source waters are highly variable.
We're also having to deal with other contaminants beyond salt,
as we find in our municipal industrial wastewaters, produced
water, and agricultural return flows. There's also the
confounding issue of concentrate management. That is, what do
we do with the salts when we separate them?
Toward this need, the DOE has issued a call for an energy-
water desalination hub, which will invest in early stage R&D.
This provides an unprecedented opportunity to coordinate
expertise across Federal, academic, and industrial research
complexes to develop new materials and new processes that will
fundamentally change the way we treat water in the future.
In conclusion, the energy-water nexus is a complex and
nuanced issue. While we are making progress, more work is
needed. And I want to stress that we have the opportunity to do
more than simply avoid future problems but rather we can
radically change the way our energy systems depend on fresh
water while creating new sources of water at competitive
prices.
Thank you for convening this hearing, and I look forward to
your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Tidwell follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you, Dr. Tidwell. Ms. Zerrenner?
TESTIMONY OF KATE ZERRENNER,
SENIOR MANAGER, ENVIRONMENTAL DEFENSE FUND
Ms. Zerrenner. Thank you. Chairman Lamb, Ranking Member
Weber, Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here
today.
Again, my name is Kate Zerrenner. I'm a Senior Manager of
Energy-Water Nexus Initiatives at Environmental Defense Fund,
Texas office.
Our energy choices matter, so coal, natural gas, and
nuclear all use vast amounts of water. Solar PV, wind use
negligible amounts, energy efficiency uses none, and that
matters because about 85 percent of our current energy
resources come from nuclear and fossil fuel, and that requires
about 133 billion gallons of water per day or about 41 percent
of total U.S. freshwater withdrawals.
And the energy-water nexus is a cascading problem. And with
extreme weather energy-water nexus can quickly turn into
energy-water collisions. With climate change, this is
intensifying the extremes in our weather. For example, in a
drought, waters for cooling is more limited, reducing the power
needed to move water, air conditioning spikes during hot and
dry days increasing the demand for power, which increases
demand for diminishing the water supply to cool that power
system. And this matters because of resilience.
So when we're looking at States like mine like Texas, we
suffered a multiyear drought from 2010 to 2015, which was only
ended by catastrophic flooding that we endured for 3 years,
culminating in Hurricane Harvey. So building resilient systems
matters. It matters to make sure that, as we see these drought
and flood cycles, which we're used to in Texas but they're
getting more extreme. So like an athlete on steroids, climate
change may not necessarily be causing these extreme weather
events, but they are enhancing their performance.
So some of the ways we've addressed this in Texas is we're
looking at some specific solutions. Two legislative sessions
ago--you may remember this, Ranking Member--we passed a bill
requiring the State to look at using solar and wind to
desalinate brackish groundwater on State-owned lands. The study
was finished and done by the Webber Energy Group and found
nearly 200 cost-effective sites on State-owned lands, which is
significant because about 98 percent of the State of Texas is
privately owned, so 194 cost-effective sites for using solar
and wind to desalinate brackish groundwater.
We've also--EDF has partnered with the Pecan Street
Project, which is a nonprofit that looks at energy and water
from the smart technology perspective, and we looked at the
end-user results of what the energy intensity of our water
systems and the water intensity of our energy systems in the
home are. A lot of people aren't aware of the amount of water
they're using when they turn their clothes dryer on, for
example. And one of the things we found is that in homes with
solar panels, for example, the water footprint of those homes
decreased by nearly 80 percent with solar panels on their
homes. So there is a significant impact on our water in terms
of how we use our energy and vice versa.
The key to all of this is data. That Pecan Street Project
was the first of its kind to do very granular data collection
so that we actually know what we're looking for. We know what
we're trying to address. EDF partnered with the Texas Army
National Guard to model and map 60 of its 90-plus installations
across the 10 climate zones of Texas. And what we did is we
took the climate data in a water scarcity solar potential, wind
potential, energy efficiency potential, geothermal potential,
and electricity prices and overlaid all of these things
together so we could give the Texas Army National Guard the
data they needed to invest smartly into what made the most
sense in terms of the water scarcity, the solar potential. For
example, El Paso came out on top with water scarcity and solar
potential, so they can then take that to the appropriators and
say we need to invest in solar in our installations in El Paso,
and then they can use money that would otherwise be spent on
electricity bills to be spent on things like training and
equipment. So there are real-world implications for the choices
we make in terms of our water and our energy choices.
The Federal Government has a fantastic role to play here.
Data collection, standards, streamlined reporting, all of those
things can be done with--H.R. 34 helps to lay that groundwork.
In 2011 Chairwoman Johnson requested GAO (Government
Accountability Office) to do a report on the energy-water
nexus. I would say an updated report of that nature would be
warranted. It has been 8 years. A comprehensive review of both
Federal programs and funding streams throughout the Federal
Government could help increase the coordination across the
Federal agencies that work on energy-water nexus issues.
And with that I close, and I look forward to any questions.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Zerrenner follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. Dr. Bonner?
TESTIMONY OF DR. RICHARD BONNER,
VICE PRESIDENT OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT,
ADVANCED COOLING TECHNOLOGIES INC.
Dr. Bonner. I would first like to thank the Committee and
its leadership for the opportunity to testify on the energy-
water nexus.
I've worked at Advanced Cooling Technologies, a small
business located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, for over 13 years.
The company started in 2003 and has grown to 130 employees. The
company was predominantly funded through the government-
sponsored research programs in its early days. Today, it still
relies on government funding for many of its new technology-
development initiatives. I currently serve as the Vice
President of R&D at Advanced Cooling Technologies.
I've closely led several research programs related to the
energy-water nexus while serving as a principal investigator.
In the ARPA-E ARID (Advanced Research in Dry cooling) program,
I led the development of a technology that could effectively
cool power plants using air instead of water. Our technology is
analogous to a DVR but for heat. We demonstrated that you can
store cold energy at night and later cool the power plant
during the day when the ambient temperature is warm and the
electricity demand from the grid is the greatest.
Through the Department of Energy's Small Business
Innovative Research program, we've developed non-wetting
coatings and surface structures to improve condensation to more
effectively remove heat from the steam circulating through
power plant steam turbines.
In another effort funded through the Department of Energy's
Fossil Energy Crosscutting Research program, we are developing
longer-life non-wetting coatings that are capable of being
replenished to maintain their cooling effectiveness for
decades.
Researchers in our R&D group are looking to solve other key
water issues as well. Through the Department of Energy's Small
Business Innovative Research program, we're looking at new ways
to desalinate water. Through another Department of Energy-
funded program, we are developing new ways to collect sunlight
to use the energy to directly drive the desalination of brine.
Finally, for the U.S. Department of Agriculture we're
looking at ways to desalinate brackish water and use the water
to directly feed the roots of plants by using a system of
underground plumbing. This innovation may make it possible for
the agricultural industry to tap into the vast amounts of
brackish water available, which will free up freshwater
supplies for other critical applications.
Recently, I was invited by the Arizona Public Service
Company to tour the Palo Verde generating station. Palo Verde
is the Nation's largest net power generating station. The
nuclear power plant is located in the desert regions of
Arizona, not near any bodies of water, which makes it unique.
Their current water solution is quite interesting. The power
plant water is completely supplied by treated sewage that is
purchased from several local large municipalities. However, the
demands on this water supply are causing the municipalities to
increase the price of this precious water supply, which will
ultimately lead to an increase in the cost of power for the
region. I met with their senior engineering team to present
some of the water reduction and cooling solutions that we have
developed, and we hope to begin working with them in the next
few months.
Without the substantial funding and experience gained
through the numerous government-sponsored research programs
that I mentioned, we would not be talking with the Arizona
Public Service Company to solve their water and cooling
problems. The government-sponsored funds are critical to small
businesses such as ours so we can take our ideas and mature
them to the levels demanded by the marketplace.
Finally, I would like to discuss some recommendations to
the Committee about some legislative features that would help
industry better solve the energy-water nexus problem. I want to
first remind and impress upon the Committee with--the scale
with which power plants operate. It is simply massive. Further,
power plants are not built every day. As a matter of fact,
they're not built often at all in the United States anymore.
This makes the often-mentioned R&D valley of death that much
more deadly for companies, universities, and national labs as
they try to commercialize their research in this area.
So how do you go from the bench top in a lab to power
plant-sized systems, and how can the government help? I suggest
that any legislation in this area should aim to address these
questions by allowing some portion of the funding through
scale-up and subscale demonstrations perhaps as a follow-on for
successful programs. I have seen this follow-on type of program
work very well in the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research)
programs. I could see something similar for some of your other
funded efforts.
I also want to discuss the cost-share requirements that
have been common for many of the Department of Energy-funded
programs as of late. Given the difficulties of scaling up and
the large follow-on investment that is required by companies to
reach utility scales, the R&D cost-share requirements seem to
unnecessarily hinder industry's flexibility to use financial
resources where they are needed most. I recommend that the cost
share be eliminated or at the very least changed to allow the
companies to get their cost-share credit through non-R&D-based
investments. These alternative investments could include
capital spending on related production equipment, intellectual
property protection, or perhaps sales and marketing.
It has been my privilege to testify in front of you today.
Thank you again for the opportunity. I look forward to
answering any of your questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Bonner follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. Dr. Singh?
TESTIMONY OF DR. RAMAN P. SINGH,
ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ENGINEERING AT OSU-TULSA AND
PROFESSOR AND HEAD OF SCHOOL OF MATERIALS SCIENCE
AND ENGINEERING, OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
Dr. Singh. Good morning. It's my honor and privilege to be
here. I'm the Head of the School of Materials Science and
Engineering at Oklahoma State University, and I also direct the
Helmerich Research Center. I do have to apologize. I'm not a
native Oklahoman, but in my own defense, I got to Oklahoma as
soon as I could, and I've managed to raise two daughters in
Tulsa. And they will both end up going to college in Oklahoma
right now.
I'm leading and building a consortium of multiple
universities led by Oklahoma State involving Caltech, the
University of Utah, Northeastern State University, and the
University of Tulsa, along with several industry partners and
Sandia to look at the safety and sustainability of fossil fuel
production and consumption. And it is with regards to that that
I'm going to talk about the produced water and the water issue
today, which is only one aspect of what we are looking for in
our consortium.
My perspective is that the prosperity of any nation,
prosperity of our Nation ultimately depends on our ability to
safely and sustainably produce and consume energy. And the bulk
of our energy today, even though you don't realize it, comes
from fossil fuels. There will be a future where we will
displace these fossil fuels with renewables, but there has to
be a bridge. And the way we see technology today, this bridge
primarily comes from natural gas produced through hydraulic
fracturing. It's a significant resource that we have. It's the
cleanest-burning fossil fuel with the least impact on
greenhouse gas production.
But this is where water comes in because you require water
to essentially break rock in terms of hydraulic fracturing. You
require large amounts of water, and more often than not, this
water is fresh water. And then the process itself produces
water, which is known as produced water, which is stuff that
comes out of the ground along with the production of shale oil
and shale gas. And it is highly contaminated. It carries a lot
of salt, and by itself, dealing with produced water has led to
other engineering challenges by itself.
There are three areas of technology that I want to focus
on. The first one is the hydraulic fracturing process itself. I
think there are significant opportunities in trying to minimize
the amount of fresh water that's used in this process and at
the same time increasing the efficiency in which we are able to
recover materials.
Right now, the recovery rates are typically 10 to 20
percent, so we--and this is where all the projections are made,
so we are recovering only about 1/10 of what is possible in
terms of shale oil and shale gas. There is some research that
has gone on. The way I look at it is water is not the only way
to break rock. It's a good way and it's a simple way, but there
are other ways which involve combination of rocks, and this is
a research area that I have been focused on.
The other aspect is what do you do with the produced water
that comes out? Now, electrical or solar desalination of
produced water is expensive. It's very highly energy-dense. But
the idea that we're looking at is that we want to try and get
it clean enough to drink. We don't have to get it clean enough
to drink. We have to get it clean enough so that we can use it
for something else and look upon it as a resource rather than a
waste that needs to be disposed.
There are a lot of membrane filtration technologies based
on ceramic nonporous membranes that are being pursued. This is
some work that we're doing at Oklahoma State. And the idea is
that you get it to the point where the number of total
dissolved solids--that's how you track how contaminated the
water is--is down to a point where you could perhaps use it for
industrial processes, you could use it for agriculture or
rangelands without trying to get it clean enough to drink.
And the other resource that is fairly interesting from the
perspective of produced water is being able to extract
chemicals from it. I'll give you an example. Lithium, the
demand for lithium has been growing tremendously. It will
continue to grow as we move more toward an electrical-based
economy simply because of battery storage requirements. We
import all of our lithium today. If we were to be able to
extract 50 percent of the lithium that comes out in produced
water, we would become a net exporter of lithium without
introducing any other mining operations as far as lithium is
concerned. And that's just one example of what can be pulled
out.
Unfortunately, the problem is very complex. I mean, I'm an
engineer. I like to think like an engineer. I like to believe
that all problems of the last 100 years have been caused by
engineers and all solutions came by engineers, too, right, so--
but a problem this requires, you know, a nexus between
engineers, legislators, regulators, industry, academia, and so
forth, and that's where I think this Committee can play a
tremendous role in terms of setting the tone in the direction
we need to go forward. So it's been an honor and a privilege
for me to be here, and I would be welcome in taking any
questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Singh follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you, Dr. Singh. I'm glad you said that
because the next time I go home and someone tells me that the
politicians in Washington are screwing everything up in this
country, I'm going to say, no, I have it on very good authority
it's the engineers.
So, Dr. Webber, go ahead.
TESTIMONY OF DR. MICHAEL WEBBER,
CHIEF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY OFFICER AT ENGIE,
AND PROFESSOR AT UT AUSTIN
Dr. Webber. Thank you very much. Chairman Lamb and Ranking
Member Weber, I appreciate the opportunity to submit testimony
today. As you've heard, the energy-water nexus presents unique
challenges and invites crosscutting solutions. Because the
energy system depends so extensively on water and the water
system depends so extensively on energy, they are both
vulnerable to cascading failures from one sector to another.
For example, a water constraint can become an energy
constraint, and an energy constraint can become a water
constraint. If water is not available at the right place and
time with the right quantity and quality, then the power sector
might struggle to generate and deliver electricity. And if
energy is not available because of blackouts, then the water
sector struggles to treat and deliver water. That means the
energy-water nexus is a resilience challenge for planners.
Thankfully, it also invites crosscutting solutions, especially
for conservation and efficiency, namely in saving water saves
energy and saving energy saves water, which avoids
environmental impact and improves resilience.
For my remarks I will focus on two aspects: The energy use
for the water system and specific challenges related to
managing wastewater from oil and gas production, building on
Dr. Singh's comments.
The combined water and wastewater system is a hallmark of a
modern society, and because the economic and public health
benefits are so extensive, they are the most important public
investments a society can make. These water and wastewater
systems also require vast sums of energy for pumps, blowers,
chemicals, and mechanical equipment. We use more energy in our
buildings to heat water, and industry uses even more energy to
treat that water further, for example, to make ultra-pure water
for semiconductor fabrication or to make steam for use in
refineries. All told, about 13 percent of national energy
consumption is for direct water and steam services. About 1/3
of that or about 4 percent of national energy consumption is
just to heat water in our homes and businesses. That is about
twice the amount of energy that Sweden uses to run their entire
country. So we use a lot of energy just in heating the water.
As a result, water heating represents an opportunity for
saving energy and avoiding emissions. In most parts of the
United States, shifting from electric heating toward natural
gas heating or solar water heating reduces energy use and
CO2 emissions. And if we clean the grid up similar
to what we have in the Pacific Northwest that's mostly hydro,
then electric water heating would be an excellent option as
well.
Incentives and information guides to encourage adoption of
more efficient appliances that use heated water like
dishwashers and clothes washers will continue to provide
nontrivial savings. According to one study, the average U.S.
household could save hundreds of dollars on their electricity
and water bills by making those appliance upgrades with the
types of upgrades that pay for themselves, meaning they save
money in addition to reducing consumption. In addition, wisely
managing the end uses of water and energy would improve the
resilience and efficiency of military installations, which
makes this a national security issue also.
The water sector's energy needs can also be used to
integrate higher fractions of renewables into the power sector.
Water treatment, wastewater treatment, and modern desalination
plants that use reverse osmosis are particularly electricity-
dependent. They can be ramped up and down and operate flexibly,
which makes them a good companion for variable resources like
wind and solar. Furthermore, it is much easier and cheaper to
store water than to store electricity. For example, you can use
simple water tanks to store water instead of expensive
batteries. And that means integrating renewables with the water
sector can help make the electricity sector more resilient
while providing valuable grid services and speeding the
adoption of clean forms of power.
Another issue, as you heard, is the amount of wastewater
produced alongside oil and gas extraction. Unfortunately, water
and wastewater are often moved by trucks, which are less
efficient, dirtier, and more destructive to communities and
more destructive to roads than pipelines. Building a pipeline-
based wastewater collection system would improve the safety and
impose much less environmental risk compared with truck-based
movement. Such a system would also reduce the cost for oil and
gas production, helping propagate the ongoing boom in places
like west Texas. A water pipeline network would also enable
specialized capabilities with economies of scale for treating
this very dirty water, which would open up the case for water
recycling and reuse while avoiding disposal by underground
injection.
The Federal Government can help. Uncertainty about gaining
right-of-ways on Federal lands make it harder for developers to
build these wastewater collection networks, which inhibits the
construction of treatment and recycling systems, leaving
underground disposal as a primary wastewater management option
and putting pressure on aquifers. Facilitating pipeline
construction would help accelerate the adoption of better
management pathways.
In addition, policy stability and certainty is important
for developers making decisions to invest in long-lived assets.
Policy shifts from year to year and government shutdowns
increase those costs and delay the projects that have
environmental benefit.
A couple closing comments is that in addition to
facilitating the development of water collection networks, the
Federal Government has other actions it can take. Encouraging
the Department of Energy to have water in mind for its programs
is a good place to start. And encouraging water planners to
keep energy in mind is also important. In addition, data
collection and sharing programs can make a big difference. Data
on urban water use is particularly scarce in comparison with
our energy data, which makes it harder to manage usage or
improve resilience. The EIA (Energy Information Administration)
dataset set the gold standard for energy data, and we need
something similar for water, perhaps by creating the agency
with that task or by expanding the EIA's mandate to include
tracking of water demand and supply.
And last, one of the most important policy levers for the
Federal Government is to sponsor R&D. Incremental improvements
will not solve these challenges quickly enough, so there's a
need to scale up the effort. The U.S. innovation system is the
best in the world, so it makes sense to leverage those
strengths to our advantage.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts. I'd be
happy to answer any questions.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Webber follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. We will now begin our round of
questions, and the Chair recognizes himself for 5 minutes.
Dr. Tidwell, I wanted to ask you, many people have
identified how water issues vary across the country, especially
as climate change gets worse and worse and becomes more
apparent. I can give you a local example. You know, I know
you've talked about out west there's often droughts and water
shortage. In western Pennsylvania where I live, the problem is
often too much water. We're having very intense and more
frequent rainstorms. We are a very hilly area. And
interestingly, someone told me there's roughly 5,000 water
systems in the United States, the continental United States for
treatment and drinking water. About 1,000 of them exist in the
10 counties of southwestern Pennsylvania. It's an interesting
historical legacy. It makes it very hard to coordinate our
efforts when it comes to water treatment.
So I was curious if you could just give us a very brief
insight on how we can help to encourage the regional
cooperation as necessary in these different areas?
Dr. Tidwell. Thank you, Chairman, for that question.
Certainly, I think one of the low-hanging fruits that we have
for this energy-water nexus is this very problem of integrated
planning and bringing different groups together. Certainly, the
opportunities that we face with these small systems, there are
rural water industrial groups that help these systems and to
provide them with the tools that they can then use and work
with their local constituents I think would be one important
place.
Another important place as we go forward is going to be in
the development of workforce skills as many of these smaller
areas don't--are not able to employ folks with the necessary
skills. And so going forward, we're going to need to develop a
trained workforce as some of these more complex technologies
come in place to treat water, to manage our water systems and
our wastewater systems. So I think----
Chairman Lamb. That's a fantastic point. Thank you very
much.
Dr. Webber, I wanted to ask you about the pipelines for
hydraulic fracturing and wastewater, big issue in western
Pennsylvania where we're doing a lot of hydraulic fracturing.
I'm not familiar with pipelines being constructed near where we
live for the actual wastewater. Most of it is being trucked
out, and it does cause a lot of impact on the local
communities. Are there areas where they have successfully built
a pipeline network for this?
Dr. Webber. This is a good point. Water and wastewater is
primarily moved by trucks, and the trucks are a source of
discontent with a lot of the communities because they change
the rural lifestyle. They add a lot of noise, a lot of dust.
They lead to traffic accidents and deaths and road impact.
Pipelines generally are much more expensive to build but much
safer and cheaper to operate once you have them built, and
there are some nascent water and wastewater collection systems
out in New Mexico and west Texas primarily, maybe a little bit
in the Bakken shale in North Dakota as well.
So there are some examples where you have concentrated
production of oil and gas and you have a policymaking process
where it's easier to build and the land is also flatter and
easier to build on, say, than the Appalachian Mountains and
other places. It's easier to build, and then that reduces the
cost for sourcing the water, collecting the water, treating the
wastewater, that kind of thing. So there are some examples.
When I talk to oil and gas operators, I think they'd like
to see more water and wastewater systems built because it would
reduce cost and do less damage.
Chairman Lamb. Do we have any policy levers at our disposal
on the Federal level to try to encourage that, and in an area
like mine that is topographically a little bit different than
the southwest?
Dr. Webber. I think the--a lot of these decisions are made
at the local level or the State level, so often it's State-
level policymakers, but there are some Federal levers at play
whenever you're on Federal lands, for example. As you get
further west, you get to BLM (Bureau of Land Management) lands,
for example, and then the Federal levers become much more
important. Most of it's at State-level decisionmaking, but
there's a role for the Federal Government to play in convening
the State-level policymakers in sharing data and information
that they can't collect themselves. So I think there is a role
for the Federal Government, but it requires cooperation at the
local and State level as well.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you very much. And last question very
quickly, Dr. Singh, you mention alternatives to water for
hydraulic fracturing. Just in sort of 10 seconds or less, are
we close on any other fluids besides water or I guess non-fluid
solutions?
Mr. Weber. Turn your mic on, please.
Dr. Singh. I think water will continue to be the major
driving fluid, but the amount of water that's used can be cut
down a lot. And plus some of the produced water can be recycled
and used back at the source itself or--for that. Does that
answer your question?
Chairman Lamb. It does. Thank you very much.
I now recognize Mr. Weber for 5 minutes.
Mr. Weber. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I'm going to give you something to read here about purple
pipe. Very quickly, Dr. Tidwell, have you ever heard of purple
pipe?
Dr. Tidwell. Yes, sir, I have.
Mr. Weber. Ms. Zerrenner, is that right?
Ms. Zerrenner. Right.
Mr. Weber. Right that it's right or right that you've heard
about pipe?
Ms. Zerrenner. Both.
Mr. Weber. OK, good. Dr. Bonner?
Dr. Bonner. I haven't heard about it.
Mr. Weber. Dr. Singh?
Dr. Singh. No, I haven't.
Mr. Weber. Dr. Webber?
Dr. Webber. Yes, and I've written extensively about it and
done research on purple pipe.
Mr. Weber. Really? OK. You know that it's a system that
takes from the home or business--it's not necessarily
wastewater from the toilet, for example, but it may be from the
sink or dishes or whatever, and it treats it to the extent that
it doesn't have to be drinkable but it could be used for
irrigation and other things like that. And I thought perhaps
that might be part of you all's focus today. But we'll go there
later.
Now, I am from Texas, as Dr. Webber knows, and I often say
that any State worth its salt has a desalination plant. And
some of you all will get that on the way home. And we have one
in Texas. Back in my days in the Texas State Legislature, I had
the opportunity to tour a large-scale desalination plant in
Brownsville. Have any of you been to that plant? She has but
you all haven't. Ladies are always leading the way. Have you
all noticed that, gentlemen? It's OK to say yes. OK. I want to
get you all softened up here.
I've seen firsthand the amount of electricity required to
convert brackish water to potable water. Dr. Singh and Dr.
Tidwell, as you know, DOE recently announced $100 million in
funding for an energy-water desalination hub that we talked
about focused on early stage research and development to
explore those uses for nontraditional water sources and to
develop new desalination technologies. So a couple of questions
for you, and I'll start with you, Dr. Tidwell. Will the
research funded by this hub focus on reducing the energy
necessary to be used in those current desalination plants? Your
thoughts?
Dr. Tidwell. Yes, sir, that's a good question. And, yes, I
think there are opportunities to help with existing plants. One
would be--one example would be with improved membrane
technology that would help reduce fowling, so that would be one
example where we----
Mr. Weber. So the product--the output--the product would be
cleaner, easier. But do you know what the number one energy
driver is in a desal plant--or need is in a desal plant?
Dr. Tidwell. It's the pressurization of the----
Mr. Weber. It's the pumps.
Dr. Tidwell. Pump----
Mr. Weber. The pumps there in Brownsville--and I'm going
back now 10 years. It must have been this big around----
Dr. Tidwell. Yes, sir.
Mr. Weber [continuing]. And the electricity required to
drive those is really tremendous.
Dr. Tidwell. Which is forcing the water through those
membranes
Mr. Weber. Correct.
Dr. Tidwell [continuing]. So anything that can help improve
that permeability----
Mr. Weber. Right.
Dr. Tidwell [continuing]. Is--would help reduce----
Mr. Weber. Efficiency, get more water out a little cheaper.
Dr. Tidwell. Yes, sir.
Mr. Weber. Because they're bringing water. And I think it
was a 12-inch pipe. Now I'm going from memory, you know, from
the Gulf of Mexico into Brownsville, and the distance you have
to bring requires of lot of electricity and a lot of pumps. Do
you agree with that, Dr. Singh, that that focus will be on
increasing the efficiency?
Dr. Singh. Yes, I agree because conventional desalination
requires--it's very energy-intensive.
Mr. Weber. Yes.
Dr. Singh. And the only reason you would do that is if you
had no other source of potable water. There are technologies
based on electrocoagulation, which can clean up what's going in
before the membranes kick in. There are technologies using
ceramic membranes, which can increase the efficiency, but that
efficiency will need to go up.
Mr. Weber. Right. And of course that's going to depend,
let's face it, on the cost of electricity, right? And so I
think we could all agree that the lower the price of natural
gas is, the cheaper that energy companies can produce energy.
That, in and of itself, will have a reduction in the cost of
desalination. Would you all agree with that? Absolutely, you
bet you. So fracking is a good thing. I'm glad we all agree on
that.
In your opinion, Dr. Tidwell, what impact could this hub
have on your research? What would your role be?
Dr. Tidwell. Most of my work is around modeling and
analysis, and so importantly, understanding how climate change
affects the resilience of our energy-water systems and
integrating uncertainty in those changing climates, changing
demands for water, changing technology, and how we can plan for
a robust, resilient system going forward into the future.
Mr. Weber. How about you, Dr. Singh? Your research--how
would you correlate this--correspond--how would this impact
you?
Dr. Singh. Two areas of research, one would be increasing
efficiency of basically breaking up rock to increase extraction
efficiencies not only for fracking but also for geothermal
systems. And the second aspect would be--which we haven't
talked about today, would be releasing the mitigation due to
induced seismicity or reinjection, so these are the two areas
that would be affected the most.
Mr. Weber. OK. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. I now recognize Ms. Horn for 5
minutes.
Ms. Horn. Good morning. Thank you all for your testimony.
And Dr. Singh, as a fellow Okie, it's good to see you here
today.
So I have a couple of lines of questioning, and I want to
start with you because I think you brought up a couple of
important points. As I'm sure it comes as no surprise to
anyone, both water and energy are big issues in my home State,
as well as that of the Ranking Member of the Full Committee. So
I wanted to follow up on some of the points that you made about
the need for interdisciplinary work because part of the
challenge with fracking is--and the challenges that we've seen
in Oklahoma with earthquakes and things like that comes from
the wastewater reinjection more so than just the breaking up of
the rock itself. So I wanted to see if in your research you had
looked at the impact that that might have of taking the water
in addition to taking it out and reusing it, the impact in
other areas for energy production.
Dr. Singh. I don't understand the other-areas part, but I
can talk a little bit about the reinjection. Reinjection right
now is not very well understood. I mean, the way--we have a
traffic light system in which if they feel that there is
something that's going to happen, reinjection stops. And this
reinjection problem is not necessarily a problem that's limited
to fracking. Induced seismicity also happens in geothermal
fields--in some geothermal fields in Europe in technology--
energy production technology that is quote/unquote ``much
greener'' than fracking.
So there is--there were initially some concerns in terms of
how clean does the produced water need to be for it to be
reused for fracking, but that concern is not because of
reinjection. That concern is mainly from being able to control
the chemistry to allow the fracking process to be more
efficient.
Ms. Horn. And if the technology continues to develop to
take the wastewater from the fracking process to be more
usable, potable even if it's not drinkable, what impact does
that have on the amount of reinjection that would have to
occur?
Dr. Singh. So to give you some numbers, a fracking
operation and the well in its lifetime will take about, you
know, 2 to 8 million gallons of water. We produce about 60
times produced water every day than that's used in the city of
Washington, D.C. So some of that will go back as--for
reinjection, but that's not the only solution. The other
solution also has to be to look upon produced water as a
resource to use it for other purposes. And in Oklahoma that,
for example, could be agriculture or rangelands and not
necessarily cleaning it up all the way for human consumption.
Ms. Horn. Thank you. The second area--and I'm going to open
this up because I think it may be best for Dr. Tidwell but if
anyone else has thoughts on this, in Oklahoma, in addition to
the municipal, State, and other Federal issues, we have 39
tribes, federally recognized tribes in the State of Oklahoma,
so this energy-water nexus also impacts issues surrounding
tribal sovereignty and water usage and water rights. So I'm
wondering if you could talk more about policy recommendations
or areas that you see emerging with this Federal, State, local,
tribal lands issue.
Dr. Tidwell. Thank you, Congresswoman. I--this is a very
important issue. I think at the end of the day, what it really
boils down to is improved communication across all of these
different entities. One of the important aspects of
particularly the Indian water rights is that in many cases in
the west they hold rights or their rights haven't been fully
adjudicated, so they play a very important role in how future
water might play out in many cases in the western United
States. And so they are an important player that we need to
bring to the table, as well as the States. The States
ultimately have jurisdiction over their water.
I might mention that DOE also has numerous programs for
helping to support energy development on Native American land.
So all of these particular activities need to be coordinated
and, you know, integrated planning is a very important part of
all that.
Ms. Horn. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. And I recognize Ranking Member
Lucas for 5 minutes.
Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As I mentioned in my opening statement, there's an
abundance of natural gas resources in my district and in many
parts of the great State of Oklahoma, as we discussed. But also
as a farmer, I understand and appreciate the importance of the
reliability of water, and I'm particularly interested in the
research partnerships and results in these areas.
So I turn to you, Dr. Singh. In your testimony, you
expressed the same sentiment by saying, ``Meaningful
interactions are needed across a variety of stakeholders,
including universities, local governments, and industry.'' Can
you give us some examples of that collaboration that you and/or
Oklahoma State and industry stakeholders have been a part of
that's generated beneficial results?
Dr. Singh. I'll give you one small example, and this came
about from our discussion with ONEOK. ONEOK transports a lot of
natural gas that's produced. In the winter to transport this
natural gas across pipelines, they have to add methanol to--as
an antifreeze basically. Now, at the same plant they're flaring
methane and burning it into--you know, burning it away. So one
technology that came about--and this is research now that's
being done and this actually involves partnership with a very
eminent chemist at Caltech is to take the onsite methane,
convert it into methanol, use that methanol instead of pumping
methanol to the stations and then discarding it at the other
end.
The only reason this came about was because I was in
discussion with the ONEOK researcher and talking about issues,
and this is a very specific example, I understand, but I think
in terms of my perspective at the Helmerich Research Center, a
lot of this discussion has been driven by industrial advisory
boards in identifying the problems that academia can solve.
Mr. Lucas. So let's touch on that for just a moment, the
industrial advisory boards. Your experiences with the
interaction and--are there ways that perhaps we could help
encourage that collaboration?
Dr. Singh. Yes. I think for us especially as academia when
we seek out, let's say, Federal or State-level funding, when
that funding specifically mandates convergence type of research
or the--you know, talking to various stakeholders in terms of
the probability of getting funded, then that pushes, you know,
multiple people to the table, and that has been helpful in our
case.
Mr. Lucas. I can't help but, Dr. Singh, touch for a moment
on the topic of fracking and injection wells, which is a very
sensitive subject in our great State of Oklahoma. In my home
area typically the oil and gas products come out in the
particular area I'm at, and it varies of course in the 10-, 12-
, 13,000-foot range. And historically, fracking has gone on in
my home area at least since the early 1970s, not as aggressive
as the hydraulic fracking, the improved technology, but
fracking's gone on. We've never had earthquakes or that sort of
stuff. The injection well process that's come along in recent
years where again typically in my area the material comes out
at 12-, 13,000 feet, but it goes back into an injection well at
5,000 feet or so. We seem to have a different kind of a
lubricating zone there so to speak under the earth.
Wouldn't you agree that the Oklahoma Corporation
Commission, the entity with primary jurisdiction in our State,
has been very aggressive in how they've responded to these
issues about the seismic issues that have come from it, how
they put limitations on certain areas and this, that, and the
other?
Dr. Singh. Yes, and I think a lot of that comes from a lack
of scientific understanding as to exactly what goes on. I think
it's a problem that can be managed. A similar analog would be
to say all fossil fuels are bad and stop consuming them
tomorrow, which means we would come to a standstill as a
country, so----
Mr. Lucas. Exactly. Therefore, it's fair to say that the
Oklahoma Corporation Commission is trying to respond in a way
until technology can catch up, until we can do the things we
need to do to be able to address this process. Thank you,
Doctor, for being here today.
And with that, Mr. Chairman, I yield back.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you, Mr. Lucas. Who's next?
I recognize Mr. Casten for 5 minutes.
Mr. Casten. Thank you, Mr. Lamb. Thank you to the panel.
The--Dr. Webber, you had mentioned in your written testimony
about creating sort of an Energy Information Administration for
water. I'm an energy geek. I love EIA. I think it's a great
idea. I should mention by way of background in my prior life, I
ran a number of clean energy companies where we went into
industrials, tightened up their energy envelope and, among
other things, ended up running all of the energy and water
assets at Kodak Park in Rochester, a 50-million-gallon-a-day
water intake permit and it was kind of a cool job for the 12-
year-old boy inside me.
I mention that because energy metering is pretty robust
because at every point in the energy system people pay for
things. There are revenue meters. Buyers and sellers want
accuracy. Water metering is terrible. The internal metering is
shoddy. They're not calibrated very often. It doesn't--often
doesn't exist. And it's basically a problem that the water's
too cheap that it's not worth the time to meter. If we were to
create a Water Information Administration, I'd like your sense,
number one, of realistically how many meters do we need to put
in? Because to my mind, it's a metering problem first. And,
number two, as you look at water data, where are you skeptical
given the meter gaps? Because in my experience you got to put
plus or minus 20, 30 percent error bars on a lot of the water
data you see.
Dr. Webber. That's a great question, great context. I think
the water metering world lags behind the energy metering world,
and the water data world lags behind the energy data world.
Energy typically is more expensive. It's also more central to
other economic and national security aspects. But, frankly, if
we go back 50 years, the energy data was pretty bad, too. It
wasn't until the 1970s and the energy crises that we created
the EIA to start tracking it more closely because there was a
sense of urgency and importance to it. And then once we started
tracking data with more fidelity in place in times, we tracked
it daily, weekly, with prices, total consumption by fuel and by
location, by industry and sector, then we could spot
opportunities for efficiency and savings. When we get to that
level of data I think for water we can spot other
opportunities, but when water's too cheap or we don't feel a
sense of urgency, it's hard to do that.
I think in the specifics of the question of metering, we
have about 100 million households. We probably need a smart
water meter for every household, so maybe 100 million smart
water meters. Plus we need them throughout the distribution
networks because 10 to 40 percent of treated municipal water is
lost from when it leaves the plant to arrives at the home,
which means we also need meters throughout these distribution
networks to track those losses so we can get repairs done
quickly and avoid all that lost water and all the energy
embedded in it.
So there's a lot of opportunity for data, data platforms,
smarter meters, better meters. Right now, the meters are not
very smart or they're read by hand or they have these errors or
they're not metered at all in some cities in the United States,
so this is a big opportunity, and the EIA lays the blueprint
for how to do it if you had a WIA (Water Information
Administration), for example.
Mr. Casten. Related--and anyone on the panel who's got a
thought on this--you've layered on top of that that we have
fairly good--subject to everything we just said, fairly good
data for surface water, and some reasonable concern about
falling snow melt I think on a per-decade basis, where since
1967, we're losing about 11 percent of our snowpack every
year--up every decade rather. The data on groundwater is a lot
worse and, you know, there's been places in northern California
I'm aware of where the water coming out of aquifers is now
exceeding the salinity levels that they can land apply, which,
I mean, this is Beyond Thunderdome kind of territory. How
confident are you that we have good data on the water--the sort
of the prehistoric water if you will? And what should we be
doing as a government to make sure we have a good handle on
that?
Dr. Webber. Yes, the fossil water some people call it. So
we have much better view of the surface water. We can see, we
can measure it. The below-groundwater we don't see as well. We
don't have great metering systems in most places, so we wait
until the well goes dry or the well goes salty, and we know
there's a problem. And NASA is a big partner for this because
they can measure water content of aquifers from space more
readily than we can from the ground ironically, so there's
partnerships with the national labs and NASA and the agencies.
I think ramping up on just a water tracking system would be
useful because then everyone can make decisions and planners
can make better informed decisions about where to put their
capital based on where the water problems are.
Mr. Casten. OK. And last question with the little bit of
time we've got left for Ms. Zerrenner if I'm saying your name
right there. You had mentioned how much water the--you know,
the nuclear and fossil fuel industry uses, and I used to tell
people all the time if you want to understand the problems with
our energy system, draw a power plant. And everybody draws a
cooling tower. However, that's really specific to the open-loop
systems. Do you have any estimate of how much of our fossil
nuclear sector is closed-loop and what we might be able to do
to encourage more closed-loop water systems on the fossil side?
Ms. Zerrenner. Yes, I--Michael may know the exact numbers.
I don't know the exact numbers, but we're seeing more and more
movement in that direction. So it's a--we see an average of the
amount used by coal and nuclear and natural gas because of the
differences and the different types of cooling. You have also--
besides closed-loop and open-loop you also have dry cooling and
wet cooling. And the dry cooling uses--so they use a lot more
water--they use a lot less water, but they also are less
efficient, so you have some tradeoffs there. So you're creating
some issues around that. But really we want to see more energy
efficiency, which uses no water. If we make our systems more
efficient, they are also more resilient.
We saw other issues like during Hurricane Harvey where the
wind turbines continued to turn in the Gulf of Mexico but the
grid was down, so they didn't have anything to connect to. So
thinking in terms of microgrid systems and making those more
efficient as well, there's--there are lots of moving pieces to
this. I--but I don't have the exact number----
Mr. Casten. OK.
Ms. Zerrenner [continuing]. Of the system.
Mr. Casten. Well, and I'm out of time, but just make a plug
for cogeneration while we're out here because so much of that--
that's what we did in Rochester, and the fact that George
Eastman built a power plant in 1880 that's twice as efficient
as the U.S. power grid today is a lesson I think we can all
learn from.
Thank you. I yield back.
Chairman Lamb. I recognize Mr. Biggs for 5 minutes.
Mr. Biggs. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. I thank all the members of
the panel for being here today.
Dr. Bonner, I was interested in your paragraph in your
written statement and then your testimony with regard to Palo
Verde nuclear generating station in Tonopah, and you were just
there recently?
Dr. Bonner. Yes, it was in the last month, yes.
Mr. Biggs. Yes, so you were there during the good weather
time, so----
Dr. Bonner. It was nice.
Mr. Biggs [continuing]. Good for you. I hope you get out
there in the summer and experience what real heat's about.
So you mentioned in your statement that there's competing
demand for the water, and we're talking effluent I assume?
Dr. Bonner. Yes.
Mr. Biggs. OK. And so I think I know what they are but
maybe you want to elaborate on what some of those competing
demands because Tonopah's--most people don't know this--where
the Palo Verde generating station is is in a remote part of
Maricopa County. Maricopa County has got--Arizona has got 7
million people in it, and Maricopa County has 5 million people
in Maricopa County. It's an odd State. We only have 15
counties. And where you went is really remote. There's no water
supply, as you mentioned. But what are the competing demands
for effluent in basically an urban area that has 5 million
people in it?
Dr. Bonner. Right. I think part of the water is to go back
to the town for its own purposes, but I think the copper
industry also uses a lot of water as well in that area. And
other industries, it's a very--it's a growing area. There's a
lot of like retirement homes and stuff being put up there, too,
people moving there, and that demand is just causing more needs
on the water. And I think the--a lot of the contracts that were
negotiated for that water when the plant was built were 30
years ago. And I think the municipalities are under the
impression that they gave it away too cheaply, especially now
with how the local area is growing, and they're trying to get
more out of it.
Mr. Biggs. Yes. You didn't mention golf courses, but
there's a lot of golf courses in the valley, so----
Dr. Bonner. Yes, it's part of the retirement part----
Mr. Biggs. Yes. So as we take a look at that and the
demands, you indicated that you are working on ways to mitigate
the--either the cooling cost or what exactly--I'm not sure what
you were working on, but I assume that you're trying to find a
way to lower costs either by reduction in the use of the
effluent or some other cooling mechanism, so----
Dr. Bonner. Right.
Mr. Biggs [continuing]. Can you elaborate on that for us?
Dr. Bonner. Sure. So Palo Verde, which is, what, cooling
towers, right, so all the water or at least 95 percent of it
goes to evaporation and the rest of it goes to evaporation
ponds. So our concept would--in order to get rid of water be
some sort of dry cooling technologies. And we were at an air
condenser--air-cooled condenser users group a few months ago.
That's where we sort of made the first connection. They saw
some of our concepts that we developed on the ARPA-E ARID
program where we can use salts to essentially store heat at
night, and then during peak demand when it's hot at three
o'clock in the afternoon, you can dissipate the heat to that
basically nighttime temperature but dissipate it during the
day. And by doing that, you can use no water but you can also
get temperatures that are similar to what you get in a wet
cooling tower, so you don't have the efficiency issues that Ms.
Zerrenner was talking about. If you try especially in somewhere
like Arizona to dissipate directly to air, usually you're
talking about at least a 15-percent decrease in power
efficiency. And I suspect in Arizona even to reach that you're
talking about a very, very large air-cooled condenser system
using traditional technologies that would be not even close to
cost-competitive to what they currently do.
Mr. Biggs. So I guess that leads me to--the logical next
question is, what would it cost to retrofit to something that's
air-cooled? I'm not asking for a bid. I'm just--you know, a
ballpark.
Dr. Bonner. Right. I think it's--when I was there talking
with them and we were in the room with some other air-cooled
condenser companies, I think you're talking about at least 10
times more expensive than a wet cooling tower in terms of
capital cost, so it's substantial.
Mr. Biggs. But does it offset over time with the usage
costs with the rising cost of effluent?
Dr. Bonner. It probably would, yes. It would offset over
time. But I think the----
Mr. Biggs. That's the salesman in you saying that, right?
Dr. Bonner. Yes, a little bit. Yes. Well, the paybacks are
longer than what you would--than what the stakeholders want to
see.
Mr. Biggs. Right. OK. Thank you very much. I'll yield back.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. I recognize Mr. McNerney for 5
minutes.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I thank the Chair. I thank the
witnesses. It's very interesting. I've got a lot of questions,
and they're not really mean questions either, so I look forward
to your answers.
Dr. Bonner, as water becomes scarcer in the west and
southwest, I really liked hearing about the alternative cooling
techniques for the Palo Verde Nuclear Generation statement. How
would that work? I mean, how would the technology you're
talking about reduce water consumption at a nuclear plant?
Dr. Bonner. Right. So, again, our--overall for dry cooling
you're dissipating heat to air, so it doesn't use any water at
all, right? It--you're not going to be taking any fresh water
and evaporating it, so it's similar to how most things--most
air conditioners would be cooled or most electronics would be
cooled. The heat eventually sinks to air.
Mr. McNerney. So it's--you're--basically what the prior
question was is----
Dr. Bonner. It's a very similar----
Mr. McNerney. OK.
Dr. Bonner [continuing]. Answer to that, yes.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Dr. Webber, your testimony
recommended a scale-up effort of the R&D in the field of water-
energy nexus. I've proposed a piece of legislation last
Congress that put a lot of effort into that issue. Could you
elaborate on what you envision for a scaled-up effort?
Dr. Webber. Yes, thank you for your support of R&D, and I
think there's an opportunity for more. If you look at the scale
of the problem for the energy sector, which is a multitrillion-
dollar sector around the world, the few billions of dollars a
year we spend on Federal R&D seems very small by comparison.
And if you look at water, it's even more stark because we spend
less than $1 billion a year on water research. And that
includes a lot of the environmental water quality issues. So I
think there's an opportunity for many more investments to be
made in better water treatment systems, the membranes that Dr.
Tidwell mentioned earlier, better pumps that were called out
earlier for the desalination systems, the variable speed drive
pumps. There could be all sorts of work under the chemistry.
There's a variety of things that we can do to look at the water
side and reducing the energy intensity of water but also, as
Dr. Bonner mentioned, looking at the water intensity of energy
in kind of a new materials or heat exchanger designs or cooling
systems for the power sector, as well as looking at new
techniques to reduce the water intensity of oil and gas
production.
There's a lot of opportunity for R&D. It's something that
industry has stepped away from over the last few decades. The
industry looks really more at applied R&D rather than basic R&D
or fundamental science, so there's room for the Federal
Government to fill that gap, and industry has been calling for
it, along with academics and national labs. So I think just the
level of funding and the sense of urgency around it has room
for stepping up.
Mr. McNerney. Great. I was kind of intrigued by your
statement that water is cheaper to store than energy. So do you
see a practical way of using that to store--to store energy or
to use energy-water more efficiently?
Dr. Webber. Yes, so there are a couple of examples. I'll
take the water heating example. There's a lot of electricity
that goes into water heating. A lot of our water heaters are on
around-the-clock whether we need them or not, and so we could
turn off water heaters if we need to save power. And turning
off the water heaters is the same as discharging power from a
battery. It has the same effect on the grid. In France they
have a peak demand that's 1/10 of what the United States has.
They have a peak demand of 100 gigawatts of electrical power.
In the United States we have 1,000 gigawatts. In France they
can turn off 3 gigawatts worth of electric water heaters to
save 3 gigawatts or 3 nuclear power plants' worth of power for
the grid. That's about the same as having a lot of batteries
doing the same thing, but it's a lot cheaper to turn off a
water heater than, say, turn on a battery.
We could do the same thing in the United States where we
use water systems in a flexible way, turn them on and off, ramp
them up and down to achieve the same benefits for the grid that
a battery might do, but it's a lot cheaper to turn something on
and off than build, buy, install, and operate a battery.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I was thinking more in terms of desal
or, you know, you can use electricity to desal and store that--
--
Dr. Webber. Yes.
Mr. McNerney [continuing]. And use it rather than--so
that's a really good match for renewables, which are
intermittent.
Dr. Webber. Absolutely. So you can ramp desalination up and
down, you can ramp water treatment or wastewater treatment up
and down and ramp them up and down to match when the renewables
are available. In that case, the water system can help speed up
the adoption of those renewables.
Mr. McNerney. Mr. Chairman, I don't know how much time I
have, so I'm going to continue to talk until you stop me, but I
don't think I'm running out of time yet.
Chairman Lamb. Go for it.
Mr. McNerney. All right, thanks.
Dr. Singh, you mentioned the hydraulic fracturing is
essentially the cleanest, but the problem in my mind is that
just a small amount of natural gas fugitive emissions cause
natural gas to be dirty compared to other forms of fossil fuel.
Can you address that?
Dr. Singh. Yes, that's correct. So natural gas, of all
fossil fuels, is probably the cleanest when you burn it.
Mr. McNerney. When you burn it.
Dr. Singh. Any form of carbon that's burned or any form of
carbon essentially leads to carbon dioxide and so does natural
gas. I mean, so do we when we breathe in and out. The problem
is methane, so methane is about 20 times as potent as a
greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide is, and that's why a lot of
methane flaring takes place because instead of venting it into
the air. So there are a lot of technologies in which--in terms
of which--and can be captured rather than wasted into the
environment, so that's--that can be minimized by capture rather
than simply venting or, you know, leakage.
Mr. McNerney. Right. But I've heard that if only 2 percent
of natural gas that's captured is leaked through----
Dr. Singh. Right.
Mr. McNerney [continuing]. Pipeage or fracking leakage or
whatever, that it's--it's undone all the good that's created by
the efficiency of burning gas. Is that an accurate number?
Dr. Singh. I would have to look at the numbers, but it
probably is an accurate sentiment in the sense that you don't
want to leak a lot of natural gas. Natural gas is not difficult
to contain. I mean, it--and you don't want to leak any fossil
fuel into the environment, but you're right in the sense that 2
percent of natural gas would be 40 percent of carbon dioxide
being leaked into the air.
Mr. McNerney. So how would you--I mean, how difficult is it
to stop any leakage in the entire system?
Dr. Singh. I think technologies do exist, right, so we
don't see big natural gas leakages in houses where we heat and
cook and eat----
Mr. McNerney. Yes.
Dr. Singh [continuing]. So the technology exists, and I
think the industry has been fairly diligent in terms of
preventing natural gas leakage, not necessarily by the most,
you know, useful means. The one way that's done right now is
just simply by flaring it and converting it into carbon dioxide
and dumping that.
Mr. McNerney. Right.
Dr. Singh. So I don't see any technological challenges in
terms of preventing that. There are technological challenges in
terms of capturing it at the source and not burning it and
using it for something else, but then there are chemists who
are working on converting it at the source into other value-
adding chemicals such as methanol or--and people are even
thinking of going all the way down to ethylene and then it
becomes a precursor for the petrochemical industry.
Chairman Lamb. Thank you. I'll now recognize Ms. Fletcher
for 5 minutes.
Mr. McNerney. Well, I haven't yielded yet, but I'll yield
back, Mr. Chairman.
Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. And I'll
actually follow up on that question because I am interested in
some of the technology surrounding the conversion of methane.
Can you finish maybe answering that question, or follow up
about what you see as the most promising technologies for
capturing methane, and how you think that that can address the
concerns about methane emissions?
Dr. Singh. OK. So I'm a mechanical engineer. I'm going to
talk on the behalf of a chemist. This is actually technology
coming out of a very brilliant chemist called Harry Gray at
Caltech. He is I think well up into his 70s or early 80s, I
don't know, and he's been working on catalytic conversion. So
the idea between catalytic conversion is it's much less energy-
intensive than anything else. And he's been able to synthesize
these new catalysts, which he creates in a plasma furnace. He
tried to explain it to me, and I understood about 10 percent of
it. But the idea is not only to convert methane, the idea is to
convert methane, the idea is to convert carbon dioxide and get
to the point where you're simply pulling these things out of
the air and converting them into value-added hydrocarbons up
the chain using electrocatalysis.
Mrs. Fletcher. And what phase of sort of research and
development is this, this concept that he's developing right
now?
Dr. Singh. I think he is maybe a few years from a desktop-
type prototype, so the idea behind these technologies is that
they are very modular, and you could implement them at a lab
scale, at a bench scale, on a skid path that gets rolled out to
a pad and be deployed. So they're not--the science has been
proven. The technology is being developed. And they're fairly
simple beyond--once you have the catalyst figured out, the rest
of the technology is fairly simple.
Mrs. Fletcher. OK. Thank you. And I have a general
question, kind of flowing from this for the panel. I know we
have such limited time, but one of the things I was wondering
about is how some of this technology and research is being
developed, and how industry has innovated or is working with
some of the researchers to address some of these challenges.
Dr. Bonner. Yes, so as I'm representing industry, we work
with universities quite often on a lot of the grants and
funding that we've gotten.
Chairman Lamb. Could you turn your mic on, Dr. Bonner?
Dr. Bonner. I think I have, so sorry. Yes. So representing
industry, you know, we do work with universities quite often on
a lot of the projects. With ARPA-E, for example, we were
working with Lehigh University and University of Missouri to
address various fundamental aspects of the technology. And I
would say probably more than half of the technologies and
programs we work on do involve university support.
Mrs. Fletcher. And, Dr. Webber, did you have a comment
here, too?
Dr. Webber. Yes, I was going to say that oftentimes our
best advances from a society occur when there is collaboration
across the different sectors, so we have industrial, academic,
and government collaboration around projects, and that often
happens, as Dr. Bonner mentioned.
I think another aspect is to try to take these good ideas,
develop, and commercialize them, and there's different ways to
do that. Creating more effective tech transfer offices at the
national labs, which has been underway for decades, and also
improving those systems for universities to get technologies
out of the lab and into the field is useful.
The larger companies in the energy sector and water sector
are really good at commercialization and scale-up. They tend to
be less good at the innovation, so they tend to collaborate
with universities or acquire companies who are innovative to
get there. So there's room for that, and the more we
collaborate, the better it goes is the short story on that.
Mrs. Fletcher. Great, thank you. And, Ms. Zerrenner, this
perhaps ties into some of your testimony that I was able to
look at before I was here. In your written testimony you talked
about coordination between the energy and water sectors, and
said that we really need to update policies there. And so can
you share your thoughts on how we can better kind of break down
these silos between the energy and water sectors, encourage
better planning between them, and work on some of these
commercialization projects as well?
Ms. Zerrenner. Sure. So a good example we have where the
coordination really works is in San Antonio where the
municipally owned water and electric utilities plan alongside
each other. They attend each other's planning meetings. They
know that each is each other's biggest customer, and then they
recognize that and follow through with that. So, for example,
we have at a wastewater treatment facility in San Antonio
biogas capture and that uses that to power the wastewater, so
that's on a very local level.
But in the Federal system, understanding--and I mentioned
this in the oral testimony. Understanding where the funding
streams are across the Federal Government would be very
helpful.
Mrs. Fletcher. Yes.
Ms. Zerrenner. At this point I don't--I haven't seen
anything, and I--when I was in the stakeholder process with DOE
on the energy-water nexus roundtables I talked about this as
well, is that I haven't seen any across-the-government
assessment or review of the different funding streams where
they go into each, so it's--you're looking at it as a
comprehensive view. So the whole idea of the energy-water nexus
is it's a system, so if we're not looking at it as a system,
we're not addressing the systemic challenges, so the funding
streams is really important because that also ties in then to
the work programs. So also you want to know where all the
programs are within the Federal Government, but you also want
to know where the funding streams are.
And I understand that Committee process. You're going to
have your Appropriations Subcommittee for water is going to be
separate than Energy, but wherever those coordination--cross-
coordinations can happen, I think that's really key. And some
places where we don't tend to think of plugging in like USDA
(United States Department of Agriculture), they have a big part
to play in the energy-water nexus space. They needed to be
plugged into this, not just DOE, not just EPA, so we have USDA,
USGS (United States Geological Survey). That's another really
important player in this space. There are a lot of places where
this happens, and sometimes they could be really small. We're
talking also about health impacts when we're talking about
energy and water, so there may be some HHS (Department of
Health and Human Services) issues that need to come up, and
looking at a comprehensive across-the-government view, you may
also find places where there are gaps that you need to fill. So
I think that's a really critical piece.
Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you. And I yield back my time.
Chairman Lamb. Before bringing this hearing to a close, I
do want to thank each of our witnesses for coming all this way
and appearing before us today. We really appreciate it.
The record will remain open for 2 weeks for any additional
statements from the Members and any additional questions the
Committee may ask of the witnesses.
The witnesses are now excused, and the hearing is
adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:29 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]
| MEMBERNAME | BIOGUIDEID | GPOID | CHAMBER | PARTY | ROLE | STATE | CONGRESS | AUTHORITYID |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sherman, Brad | S000344 | 7832 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CA | 116 | 1526 |
| Lipinski, Daniel | L000563 | 7923 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | IL | 116 | 1781 |
| McNerney, Jerry | M001166 | 7816 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CA | 116 | 1832 |
| Perlmutter, Ed | P000593 | 7865 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CO | 116 | 1835 |
| Cohen, Steve | C001068 | 8156 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | TN | 116 | 1878 |
| Foster, Bill | F000454 | 7355 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | IL | 116 | 1888 |
| Posey, Bill | P000599 | 7887 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | FL | 116 | 1915 |
| Tonko, Paul | T000469 | 8082 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | NY | 116 | 1942 |
| Olson, Pete | O000168 | 8178 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 1955 |
| Brooks, Mo | B001274 | 7790 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | AL | 116 | 1987 |
| Bonamici, Suzanne | B001278 | 8367 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | OR | 116 | 2092 |
| Bera, Ami | B001287 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CA | 116 | 2102 | |
| Weber, Randy K., Sr. | W000814 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 2161 | |
| Babin, Brian | B001291 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 2270 | |
| Beyer, Donald S., Jr. | B001292 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | VA | 116 | 2272 | |
| Biggs, Andy | B001302 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | AZ | 116 | 2307 | |
| Dunn, Neal P. | D000628 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | FL | 116 | 2315 | |
| Crist, Charlie | C001111 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | FL | 116 | 2321 | |
| Marshall, Roger W. | M001198 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | KS | 116 | 2328 | |
| Norman, Ralph | N000190 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | SC | 116 | 2361 | |
| Lamb, Conor | L000588 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | PA | 116 | 2367 | |
| Lamb, Conor | L000588 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | PA | 116 | 2367 | |
| Cloud, Michael | C001115 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 2369 | |
| Balderson, Troy | B001306 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | OH | 116 | 2370 | |
| Hill, Katie | H001087 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CA | 116 | 2379 | |
| Waltz, Michael | W000823 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | FL | 116 | 2387 | |
| Casten, Sean | C001117 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | IL | 116 | 2398 | |
| Baird, James R. | B001307 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | IN | 116 | 2400 | |
| Stevens, Haley M. | S001215 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | MI | 116 | 2409 | |
| Sherrill, Mikie | S001207 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | NJ | 116 | 2422 | |
| Gonzalez, Anthony | G000588 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | OH | 116 | 2430 | |
| Horn, Kendra S. | H001083 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | OK | 116 | 2431 | |
| Fletcher, Lizzie | F000468 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 2447 | |
| McAdams, Ben | M001209 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | UT | 116 | 2452 | |
| Wexton, Jennifer | W000825 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | VA | 116 | 2457 | |
| Johnson, Eddie Bernice | J000126 | 8186 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | TX | 116 | 599 |
| Lofgren, Zoe | L000397 | 7821 | H | D | COMMMEMBER | CA | 116 | 701 |
| Lucas, Frank D. | L000491 | 8111 | H | R | COMMMEMBER | OK | 116 | 711 |
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