From the blog of the Australian Tea Party:

This is the most rational argument I have ever heard about Water in Australia. I always believed that it was silly to talk about water restrictions in a country like Australia which has only 21 million people. I think the Australian Tea Party needs to improve its website but I think the ideals they talk about are something which I connect to.

So yes Australia does have meager water supplies compared to the other continents, but these figures lack relevance unless we consider two other vital factors. Australia is the smallest continent on earth and much more importantly we have a miniscule population in comparison to other continents and countries.

If we look at a comparison of precipitation per head of population, which is much more relevant, we get a dramatically different picture.

Water per person from annual precipitation from various countries:
Australia: 122 megalitres
Brazil: 121 megalitres
United States 29 megalitres
China: 11 megalitres
Japan: 5.9 megalitres.
United Kingdom: 2.6 megalitres.

Leaving aside ground water for now, Australia has another source of water.
Because most of our cities and towns were originally built on river estuaries, for obvious reasons and because no thought was given to the collection of runoff from roofing and pavement, most of our storm water runs into the sea unrecorded in run-off figures. While the quantum of this is not known, estimates of around 40 million megalitres annually are considered reasonable. Most of this run-off occurs on the eastern seaboard.

So, how much water do we need?
For each Australia household to have all the water we need to live what we consider to be the Australian lifestyle. That is, have a garden with lawn on which we wash the car when we feel like it, have a pool for the kids and generally not have to be concerned about water use or shortage.

We need 110,000, litres per person per year.
This figure includes all domestic use, Council and industrial use, but does not include Agriculture and Mining. Therefore for every 9 people in Australia we need 1 megalitre of water per year.

Let us assume that with some rational planning we did the following:
1. Collected and recycled just 5% of urban runoff = 2M megalitres
2. New dams to collect just 5% of river runoff = 14 M megalitres.
Total 16 million megalitres; that is sufficient for 144 million extra people.

Pure water is one of the world’s most precious natural resources. With much of India’s population denied access to safe drinking water, the delivery of safe, convenient and affordable water purification is one of the biggest social and technological challenges in the country today.

Responding to this challenge, Tata Chemicals today unveils ‘Tata Swach’ – a unique and innovative water purifier. Requiring no energy or running water to operate, an early version of the product first saw the light of day as part of the Tsunami relief efforts. Today, the replaceable filter-based product, which is entirely portable and based on low-cost natural ingredients, delivers safe drinking water at a new market benchmark of Rs30 per month for a family of five.

Speaking at the launch, Ratan Tata, Chairman, Tata Sons, said: “Safe drinking water is the most basic of human needs. The social cost of water contamination is already enormous and increases every year. Although today’s announcement is about giving millions more people affordable access to safe water, it is an important step in the long-term strategy to find a solution to provide affordable access to safe water for all.”

Tata Swach is the result of years of collaboration between several Tata companies, including TCS, Tata Chemicals and Titan Industries. Based on an innovative concept developed by the TCS Innovation Labs – TRDDC, the Swach technology combines low-cost ingredients such as rice husk ash with superior nanotechnology. The efficiency of the product has been rigorously tested to meet internationally accepted water purification standards.

Water-borne disease is the single greatest threat to global health, with diarrhoea, jaundice, typhoid, cholera, polio, and gastroenteritis spread by contaminated water. According to a 2007 United Nations report, half of the world’s hospital beds are occupied by patients suffering from water-borne diseases. In India, such diseases cause more than 1.5 times the deaths caused by Aids and double the deaths caused by road accidents.

via Tata group | Tata Chemicals | Media releases | Tata Chemicals launches ‘Tata Swach’.

To save water we need to look at the world at a deeper level and not just from a consumption point of view.

GOOD Transparency – Walk This Way.

In Asia, the availability of water has become a key issue that could determine whether the region is characterized by cooperation or interstate and international conflict in the years to come.

Undoubtedly, China holds the key to the above question as it controls the Tibetan plateau. The plateau is home to enormous glaciers and the world’s greatest river systems. These rivers act as a ridge-rope for the world’s two most populous countries, China and India, and also to Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Bhutan, Nepal, Cambodia, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam, which combined are home to 47 percent of the global population.

via The Geopolitics Of The Tibetan Plateau | Sramana Mitra on Strategy.

Akash Ganga in Hindi translates to the “the perrenial river Ganga from the sky”. Very apt.

I admire the intention behind it and I think it is a great product innovation coming out of India. Now that they have launched a new website with their productI want to figure out their strategy.

Their website and news articles suggest that they are going for the home and office market as a fresh water solution. Is this the right strategy?

It will be interesting to check out the economics.

First, they provide a comparison with reverse osmosis. I think number 4 should be the other way round.

This may not be the right comparison as they both have their uses. Also, most reverse osmosis plants function from sea water and not ground water.

The market for Akash Ganga is different and it works only under some specific circumstances in terms of high humidity, temparature and continous energy.

Their basic product – AS-650 – 40 liters/day – requires a relative humidity of 80% and temparature of 90 Faranheit consuming 750 watts of power per hour and takes 24hrs to produce 40 litres.

Let’s calculate the cost of running this product.

Appliance	Watts	x	Hours per Day	x	Days per Year	÷	Convert to kWh	KwH Per Litre	kWh Rate	=	Cost per Litre
Akash Ganga	750	x	24	x	1	÷	1,000	40/18=2.22	Rs 5.5	=	Rs. 12.2

It takes about 2.22kwH to generate 1 litre of water and costs about Rs12.2 a litre. Average cost of electricty comes from here .

If we add the capital cost and running costs, it may not be an economical alternative in a home.

Next, what about the right conditions for maximum efficiency. It works I think at 50% relative humidity too but provides the maximum output at 80%.

If we look at today’s map of India there are not many places where this product will provide the maximum efficiency.

(Source: Intellicast )

To really take this forward they need to predict the relative humidity in the various cities in India. A journal article like “Prediction of monthly-mean hourly relative humidity, ambient temperature, and wind velocity for India” could be a good start.

Then combined with temperature averages we can narrow down to a possible list of places.

For Bombay these are the following averages for decades.

Add to this the availability of power. There is a 14% shortage of power in India in general due to subsidized power for farmers.

Once locations are filtered through this constraints then market scenarios need to be looked at.

Are homes the best place for this?

I think there needs to be a better strategy in place if this product needs to succeed.

Justice Dhingra while sentencing the officials said “It is only in this country that citizens have to knock at the doors of court in order to get reliefs of the kind sought here. It only shows with what contempt normal citizens of this country are dealt with by authorities and essential facilities like sewage lines are not maintained by DJB despite repeated complaints of the citizen.”

This is extraordinary in two ways. One, that a judge has taken this strong stance and two, that it requires judiciary to get things done.

Of the three brances of a civil society (lesgislative, political and judiciary), it has always been the judiciary which has to step into the role of legislation. This is unfortunate but when the normal process of democracy fails then somebody needs to take charge.

Under a cap and trade system, water polluters could have the option to reduce pollution in their own operations or buy water pollution-control or water quality credits from another source at a lower cost than if they undertook the pollution control themselves.

In theory a cap and trade system would achieve the same overall water-quality improvement at a lower overall cost. It would also allow water treatment technology transfer if integrated into a larger global market system.

And such programmes don’t have to be limited to water-quality problems, either. Industries, farmers or cities could also conceivably buy and sell credits for water use, driving down the cost of water conservation and efficiency programmes.
[...]
The holistic effect is to add to the sustainability of the commodity. The general trend in the price of water rights to abstract also has seen some incremental growth. A record was recently achieved in the US of close to $30,000 for an acre foot per year (325,851 US gallons or 1,233.5 kl (or m³) per year) – not bad considering similar rights were trading at $500 five years ago.

“Less than 0.007% of all the water in the world is potable, or safe for consumption,¹ yet the demand for fresh water is steadily increasing,” said Bozena Jankowska, portfolio manager of the Allianz RCM Global Water Fund. “Solving this global water challenge demands a long-term effort from institutions around the world which we believe will require significant investment from the private sector.”

The Fund will seek long-term capital appreciation by investing in a portfolio of companies that are substantially engaged in water-related activities that relate to the quality or availability of or demand for potable and non-potable water. The following are included among these activities:

• Water production, storage, transport and distribution;
• Water supply-enhancing or water demand-reducing technologies and materials;
• Water planning, control and research;
• Water conditioning, such as filtering, desalination, disinfection and purification;
• Sewage and liquid waste treatment; and
• Water delivery-related equipment and technology, consulting or engineering services relating to any of the above-mentioned activities.

BioteQ was honoured for the water-treatment plants it designs and operates at mines around the world, using a proprietary system that removes acid and heavy metals from runoff water leeching from mine sites – a major environmental headache for mining companies for decades.
[...]
“[The companies] outsource the whole water-treatment issue to us, we manage the water, we build the plant and run it, and generally we create a financially sustainable treatment process, in that the sale of metals from the process sustains the treatment plant …”

The amount of cleaned water runs to billions of litres. For example, BioTeq cleaned 920 million litres of acid-waste water from Xstrata’s Raglan nickel-copper mine in northern Quebec last year. Mr. Marchant says the processed water was safe enough to be used in the sensitive arctic ecosystem of Nunavik – something unthinkable in the past.
[...]
Currently, the method most mining companies still use to stop acid water from leeching into the ecosystem involves catching the tainted water with lime, resulting in a toxic sludge that must be carefully stored. The expense is considerable – as is the waste, notes Mr. Marchant.
[...]
In the BioteQ system, a mixture of sulphur-loving bacteria neutralizes the acid in the water, leaving behind the heavy metals that come away in the mining process, such as copper, zinc, nickel, cobalt and selenium. These metals can then be sold on the market.

Money isn’t the only thing flowing through China right now. Pollution has filled the streets, contaminated the rivers and clouded the skies.

Half of China’s population – 600 people to 700 million people – drinks water contaminated by human and animal waste. In fact, 1 billion tons of untreated sewage is dumped into the Yangtze River each year. And, according to a recent study conducted by the World Bank, air pollution causes more than 400,000 premature deaths every year.

With the health of its population fading and global opposition to carbon emissions rising, China has no choice but to address its pollution epidemic. And thanks to a blistering economy and a stockpile of cash reserves, throngs of investors are eager to help Beijing wash away its troubles.
[...]
According to a Cleantech Network report and industry insiders attending the clean energy forum in Beijing, water treatment and energy efficiency projects boast the greatest investment potential.
[...]
Both Guo and Liu agree that the greatest obstacle to solving the nation’s water crisis is economics.

“Artificially low water prices, as well as lack of preferential policies from the central government, mean that it doesn’t make economic sense for companies to adopt costly technologies to improve water usage efficiency and re-utilize wasted water at the moment,” Guo told InterFax.
[...]
The second biggest environmental concern for China is the nation’s suffocating air pollution. So far, China has relied heavily on coal-fired power plants to power its rapid industrial expansion.

Between 2003 and 2006, worldwide coal consumption increased as much as it did in the 23 years prior. China was responsible for 90% of that increase. China used 2.5 billion tons of coal in 2006, more than the next three highest-consuming nations combined. The country is home to more than 2,000 coal-fired power plants, and a new one goes into operation every week.
[...]
The nation’s climate-change program has set a target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 950 million tons over the next two years. Last week, at the U.N. climate conference in Bali, Xie Zhenhua, vice chairman of the National Development and Reform Commission, said China’s investment in renewable energy would reach $20 billion this year.

“China is already the world’s factory,” Yang Ailun, climate change program manager at Greenpeace China, told Bloomberg News. “It could be and should be the manufacturing hub of clean technology for the world as well.”
[...]
China-based manufacturers of alternative energy technologies are already taking off in a big way. Companies specializing in alternative energy have seen their stock prices soar. Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP) has seen its stock price skyrocket by 137% this year. Solarfun Power Holdings Co. (SOLF) has jumped 125%.

Vcs are already there. Large companies like GE are building desalination plants. Suntech’s technology was developed in Australia. More entrepreneurs are looking to China for growth in this area. For individual investors, ETFs can be a possibility. However, figuring out the right value at this time is tough. And there is always the need for people who can understand China and the green tech sector!