06 2018
QUALITY TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION FOR THE WATER SECTOR
by Raffaele Di Stefano
THE AUTHORS THE AUTHORS Raffaele DI STEFANO – ANIE Federation Water Task Force
ANIE CSI is the association within ANIE Federation which represents the plant components and systems industry. The Water Task Force works to make all interested bodies understand that technological innovation, systems integration and the ability to adapt to market changes underway – specific characteristics of the member companies – can represent a new way of ensuring service effi- ciency.
ENERGIA MEDIA Energia Media is a communication and public relations agency operating mainly in the energy, utility and smart city, and smart land sectors. It develops communication strategies, facilitates relationships, and processes content and information. www.energiamedia.it All images and photographs included in this document have been correctly purchased from data bases. Should the author believe that copyright rules have been violated, he is requested to contact the following address: comunicazione@energiamedia.it
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QUALITY TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION FOR THE WATER SECTOR by Raffaele Di Stefano
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Innovation in the water sector can be summarised by the integration of overall knowledge of the integrated cycle process and the compendium of the best technological applications available, useful and necessary for rendering said process more efficient; with the objective of doing what is already done, better and at a lower cost (efficiency) and performing new actions (effectiveness). Integrated Water System managing bodies have full knowledge of the process and can ac- quire further specific technological skills, thanks in particular to collaboration with innovati- ve companies. Nevertheless, in relation to proposals related to technological solutions to place on the market, the industrial world is not always able to adapt them to water cycle management processes decided by the utilities, and ends up focusing the proposal on the product rather than on its functions within the water cycle process. But the process must choose the product and not vice versa. It is therefore necessary for water managing bodies and the components and systems industry to have discussions to share their respective skills and work together towards the common goal of providing a suitable infrastructure to ensure the best possible efficiency in the management of Integrated Water Systems. Technological innovation to ensure service efficiency must become management theory and practice, and it is appropriate that in addition to managing bodies, the public administration and particularly the “Enti di Governo d’Ambito� (sector governing authorities) are aware of this, in their double capacity of service planners and regulators. Creating information channels on the opportunities technology provides is a must, in order to achieve their best integration within water service management planning programmes from the time of conception and design.
ACCADUEO - PAPER 6 -2018
This dialogue is necessary and cannot be left only to the parties’ willingness; it must be supported and favoured in particular by the responsible Authority (ARERA), through adequate regulation to support efficiency and innovation; in particular by rendering more favou- rable for the Integrated Water System managing body, including from an economic point of view, the choice of efficiency over maintaining inefficient management. Because the threat is the following: since water “still runs in pipes”, without “external pressures” driving them to innovate and give Integrated Water System greater efficiency and effectiveness, in a close to monopoly system, different and other urgencies fill the minds and agendas of managers and “Enti di Governo d’Ambito”. Furthermore, the serious water crisis of our times provides a plastic representation of the fragility of the system and the overall inadequacy of response to climate change. We are at a point where protection and rational use of the resource are no longer an option, but rather a dramatic urgency. And in the light of forecasts of the climate changes underway, the question of managing the scarcity of the resource and its rational use becomes a mandatory imperative - to redirect both industrial responsibilities of managing bodies and planning priorities of Public Authorities and Integrated Water System administration, and to guarantee the social balance of urban and local communities. Available data indicate that the water resource has been managed unwisely: estimated network leaks average 40%; reuse is at single digit figures; the quality of groundwater – as far as may be detected with the limited survey tools available to ISPRA, for example – is significantly impaired. Although water consumption for human requirements is negligible in consumed water volu- me terms compared to that of agricultural and industrial consumption, it is however para- mount for those requirements it must guarantee, and represents without doubt the cultural framework of reference for management of water resources. Therefore, developing a cultu- re of efficiency of the resource for human use means directing or rather creating holders involved in processes of transformation and development of the city and territory. the conditions for efficient use of water resources in agriculture and industry also.
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For this reason, regulation of the Authority has had, and will continue to have in the near future, an extraordinary importance not only in ways of managing Integrated Water Systems, but even more importantly, directly in the formation of the “management culture” of these water resources. This extraordinary importance is therefore matched by an equally extraordinary responsibi- lity to the “Italian System” and all citizens, because while it is true that operational practi- ces for managing Integrated Water Systems are also (if not above all) formed on the pre- scriptions dictated by the Authority, it is even more true that managers’ consciences (not only those of management companies) are formed through the adoption of those practi- ces; therefore efficient management of a strategic resource for human existence is a mat- ter of conscience, even more than rules; and healthy regulation serves precisely to shape those consciences. PROMOTE EFFICIENCY, TELECONTROL AND SMART ME- TERING Based on these assumptions, we hope that regulation and the related pricing will adequately promote energy savings, a reduction in leaks, reuse of the resource, and access to consumption data. Adequate and widespread use of smart metering and telecontrol systems can on one hand ensure the ability to correctly measure and save water and energy resources and achieve the environmental protection objectives set by European legisla- tion, in addition to ensuring a satisfactory economic return for managing bodies and for users by reducing costs. And availability of citizens’ consumption data would allow an effective policy for responsible consumption to be set, to encourage changes in behaviour. The required technological innovation must be based on quality criteria: quality of information (and therefore data), of the service infrastructure, the supplied resource, and wastewa- ter treatment; but if efficient management is not promoted it may happen – and does still happen in too many areas of Italy – that managing bodies’ choices are oriented to ineffi- ciency, the immediate, direct and short-term costs of which could be lower than those of efficiency, leaving users and the community in general to bear the waste in water and 5
ener- gy resources, with the related increase in CO2 emissions in addition to higher service ma- nagement costs. Last but not least, I believe it is right to direct the water system and in particular the investments made, towards solutions which ensure - thanks in part to the contribution of technological innovation – social benefits for individual users and the community in general, evidencing concrete results in terms of supplied service quality and efficiency of those services and their costs. In this regard, the ANIE water task force has put forward two strategic proposals: to create an efficiency index for the management of water resources, and to measure the carbon footprint per user produced by Integrated Water System, with particular reference to purification. In the light of the above considerations, two proposals for action have been formulated with reference to water and energy saving, for greater efficiency and effectiveness of Integrated Water System and to address the challenges of climate change. First proposal. Immediate objective for saving water resources: determine an efficiency index for management of the resource, built on the ratio of total water volume fed into the network to the number of residents served: the lower the amount of water fed into the network per resident, the higher the efficiency index. The index could ease managing bodies’ collection constraints (to the detriment of users) by acting on collection savings for a more rational management of water resources. This index would also encourage the proper application of the “consumer pays” principle, without passing the costs of inefficiency on to end-users. Medium-term objective for saving water resources: encourage managing bodies to modernise the wa- ter network control and management infrastructure by acquiring innovative means and tools, large-sca- le introduction of smart metering, including for grouped and industrial users, and acquisition of a sy- stem to capture measurements of collection data and effective and concurrent consumption data, the- refore no longer estimated and difred data. Reduction of the real cost of water resources per user through collection savings.
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Second proposal. Immediate objective for saving energy: determine the carbon footprint produced per user in management of the water system and specifically in purification, i.e. the number of kilos of CO2 discharged into the environment per equivalent user. Identifying this footprint allows determination of the environmental efficiency of Integrated Water System management, and purification in particular, as well as proper and timely application of the “polluter pays� principle and more generally correct determination of the environmental costs of water management and purification. Indirect objective for energy saving: encourage managing bodies to modernise the infrastructure and increase the overall efficiency of the system; first analyse and then reduce the service’s energy and en- vironmental costs; promote the recovery of purification biogas; increase the resilience of Integrated Water System.
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