Periodic Reporting for period 2 - ENERWATER (Standard method and online tool for assessing and improving the energy efficiency of wastewater treatment plants)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2016-09-01 do 2018-10-31
The main aim of ENERWATER was to co-create, develop, validate and to disseminate an innovative standard methodology for continuously assessing, labelling and improving the overall energy performance of Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs). For that purpose, a collaborative framework in the water treatment sector including research groups, SMEs, water management companies, city councils, water authorities and industry was established. By successfully fulfilling its objectives, ENERWATER has been able to tackle the challenge of improving energy efficiency in wastewater treatment plants with an integrated approach:
- Defining appropriate indicators of energy efficiency in wastewater treatment plants;
- Developing a standard method for measurement of energy efficiency in WWTPs, facilitating benchmarking among plants and/or at different time periods as well as effective communication (Figure 1);
- Demonstrating the monitoring of energy efficiency of 50 WWTPs in Spain, Italy and Germany;
- Providing data treatment tools that can be used for diagnosis of the operational factors impacting energy efficiency.
Concerning standardization activities, it was first confirmed the absence of specific normative documents in the framework of energy efficiency in WWTPs and the CEN/TC 165, Wastewater engineering, was identified as the most relevant technical committee for ENERWATER. A fluent communication was established with it, in particular with its WG 40, leading to the proposal of a Technical Report that is currently being discussed as a basis for a future standard on energy efficiency estimation in WWTP.
On the academia area, besides the presentation of partial and complete results of ENERWATER in several international conferences, a cooperative paper providing an overview of the literature of WWTP energy-use performance and of the state-of-the-art methods for energy benchmarking and their advantages and disadvantages was published. Co-authored also by several partners of the consortium, a second paper describing the ENERWATER methodology has been submitted. Furthermore and delving on the need of the provision of data treatment tools that can be used for diagnosis of the operational factors impacting energy efficiency, other research activities focused on the development and application of data analysis methods and several scientific papers are now available.
The ENERWATER benefits are a consequence of achieving energy efficient wastewater treatment, which has a significant impact on the European population, as consumers of water, water bodies and the environment. One of the major costs of the water utilities, whether they are public, private or in any mixed partnership, is the energy expenditure. Even though the price of water provision is often regulated to a certain extent, the energy cost in wastewater treatment should in principle be transferred to the consumers.
Water governance is very heterogeneous in Europe. Nonetheless, the most common scheme features the public administration as responsible for the wastewater treatment as well as water distribution and production. In many cases, the administration delegates the public service through a leasing arrangement to a public or private operator with a tender repeated every 10/20 years and open to other operators. The ENERWATER method, aiming at being a standard energy audit tool, allows public administrations to benchmark, on a fair comparison basis, the energy efficiency of operators thereby providing an important criterion for the tender with the ultimate goal of reducing the water bill and the environmental impact.
The state of water bodies, in particular rivers, lakes, groundwater and coasts is a great concern for EU citizens as described repeatedly by Eurobarometer polls. The Water Directive (Directive 2000/60/EC) established a complete framework for protecting water bodies and sets the goals for wastewater treatment. The limits for discharge of N, P or organic matter represent a trade-off between the ecological requirements of the water bodies and the energy and resources needed to clean the wastewater further. ENERWATER gives the possibility of considering stricter discharge limits as it allows deeper control and understanding between tighter control over the effluent discharge and energy required to it.
Finally, EU citizens as water consumers will benefit of lower water tariffs and better information about the performance of wastewater treatment in their municipality or region as ENERWATER establishes the correct bases for comparison and operation of WWTPs.