Sustainability and Energy Management for Water Resource Recovery Facilities

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The Water Environment Federation (WEF) is a not-for-profit technical and educational organization of 33,000 individual members and 75 affiliated Member Associations representing water quality professionals around the world. Since 1928, WEF and its members have protected public health and the environment. As a global water sector leader, our mission is to...

Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) represents more than 150,000 members of the civil engineering profession worldwide and is America’s oldest national engineering society. Created in 1999, the Environmental and Water Resources Institute (EWRI) is an Institute of ASCE. EWRI services are designed to complement ASCE’s traditional civil engineering base and to...

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Energy savings and sustainable design deserve special attention to be sure water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) have long-term adaptability and resilience to global climate change, volatile energy prices, and other predictable change scenarios. Municipal WRRFs in the United States use approximately 30.2 bil. kWh/yr, or approximately 0.8% of total electricity use in the United States (EPRI, 2013). Yet, of the approximately 14,780 WRRFs in the United States, only approximately 1268 (8.4%) include anaerobic digestion (which offers the potential to recovery chemical energy) and beneficially use this energy on site for production of power and/or heat (WEF, 2013).

A number of frameworks for integrating sustainability concepts into projects have been developed in the last two decades. Table 1 provides a summary of sustainability frameworks and related references relevant to the wastewater industry. The choice of which framework is most appropriate for a given project depends on the overall project goals, geographic location, intended use of the installed facility, and owner preferences. Regardless of which tool is used to help integrate sustainability into a project, the project team should anticipate that there will be tradeoffs between competing objectives during each phase and plan ahead as to how objectives will be prioritized and the resulting facility optimized. These tradeoffs are themselves a function of previous decisions about economic, environmental, and community boundaries.

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