The food-energy-water nexusand challenges in decision making

Aidong Yang and Till WeidnerDepartment of Engineering Science

University of Oxford

Product Development Symposium | DTU | 10 November 2017 1

Outline

• The food, energy and water (FEW) challenges

• Managing the FEW nexus

• modelling and assessment

• integrated design

• Reflections: product and system innovation

2

Material essentials for survival and flourish

Nutrition and hydration…

…heat and light…

…fuel and electricity

3

10+ years into 21st century: the world is not doing well with FEW…

Food (UNICEF 2016)

Energy(UN SDG report 2014)

Water (WHO 2011)

Life-threatening consequences

• 1 in 5 people lack access to modern electricity

• 2.7 billion people or 40% rely on wood, coal, charcoal or animal waste for cooking and heating

• About 2 billion people suffer from micronutrient malnutrition

• Nearly 800 million people suffer from calorie deficiency

• 2.5 billion people lack access to sanitation facilities

• 768 million people rely on unsafe drinking water

• 2.6 million child deaths per year• 11% of global burden of disease

• 1.5 million deaths related to indoor pollution

• 1.5 million deaths per year• 9.1% of global burden of

disease

30% of soil degraded globally2

15-35% of irrigation withdrawals exceed

supply rates3

20% of world’s aquifers over-

exploited1

1 UNESCO 2012/20142 IEA, 20123 Global Land Outlook, 2017

4

…and the future is daunting

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

2010 2030

Agriculture

Industry

Municipaland Domestic

Future freshwater needs2

Tera litre/year

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

2010 2030

Globalpopulation

Populationliving undersevere waterstress

World population1

Billions

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

18

2010 2030

Non-OECD

OECD

Global energy demand3

Billion toe/year

• Changing diet• Food demand expected to

double

1. OECD Publishing 20082. 2030 Water Resources Group, 20093. BP Energy Outlook, 2013

5

FEW to climate change: both a causer and a victim

* EPA reporting, 2017

25%

24%

10%

14%

21%

6%

Electricity and Heat Production

Agirculture, Forestry and Other Land Use

Other Energy

Transportation

Industry

Buildings

Global GHG emissions by economic sector*

Vulnerability to climate change

Combined Food, Energy, Water

theguardian

6

FEW in a nexus

Ecosystem

• Energy used for desalination, pumping and waste water treatment

• Water used for energy generation (indirect: cooling and

process water, direct: hydro and tidal energy)

• Impact on water quality (fertilizer run-off)

• Water withdrawals for agriculture (irrigation, process water)

Rainfallground water rivers

Feedstock, sources

Arable land , forestry, livestock

• Fuel (harvest, tillage, transport, fertilizer production) and electricity (pumping, processing)

7

70%1

15%1

30%2

1 UNESCO 2012/20142 IEA, 2012

Complexity of managing the FEW nexus

Competition between system objectives

Competition between sectors• Land use (food vs. fuel) • Hydropower (upstream) vs. irrigation (downstream)• …

Productivity

Sustainability

Difficulty in change management• Stakeholder awareness and

interests• Socioeconomic factors• Changing political landscape

Resilience

8

A brief history of integrated FEW studies

1940s onwards: considerations on resources and the environment*• 1949: United Nations Scientific Conference for the Conservation and Utilization of Resources• 1960s – 1970s: Silent Spring/Rachel Carson; Ecology/Odum; The Tragedy of the Commons/Garrett

Hardin; The limits to Growth/Club of Rome• 1987: Our Common Future (Brundtland Report)• 2000: Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

2009 John Beddington: “perfect storm”2011 Bonn conference: “The Water, Energy and Food Security Nexus – Solutions for the

Green Economy”2014 UK’s ESRC “The Nexus Network”2015 UK’s EPSRC nexus sandpit (Vaccinating the Nexus; WEFWEBs; Stepping Up); The

Local Nexus Network2016 UK’s Centre for the Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus (CECAN)2016 US NSF/USDA programme of Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy and Water

Systems (INFEWS)

*Dennis Wichelns, 2017

9

Outline

• The food, energy and water (FEW) challenges

• Managing the FEW nexus

• modelling and assessment

• integrated design

• Reflections: product and system innovation

10

Emerging tools for nexus modelling and assessment

Tool Modelling approach Scale Scope

GLOBIOM Dynamic multiregional

partial equilibrium

model

Global FEW nexus and other

interacting systems such

as ecosystems

WEF Nexus Tool 2.0 Input-output National FEW nexus components

MuSIASEM Input-output, nested

hierarchical view of the

economy

Aggregated to national

or sub-national level

WEF nexus components,

land, economy, human

capital and ecosystems

CLEWS Integrates detailed

models from different

tools

Regional Climate, Land, Energy and

Water

Quantitative assessment framework Input-output based on

Lontief matrices

National FEW nexus components

DEA Data Envelopment

Analysis Model

Local (city level) FEW nexus components

PRIMA Integrates regional

climate, hydrology, agri-

culture and land use,

socioeconomics and

energy systems sector

models

Regional FEW components,

economy, land use

NexSym System dynamics Local FEW components, local

ecosystems,

consumption

General-purpose LCA tools Resource and impact

accounting

Supply chain Product life cycles

11

NexSym: A techno-ecological simulator for local FEW systems

12E. Martinez-Hernandez, M. Leach, A. Yang, 2017, Understanding water-energy-food and ecosystem interactions using the nexus simulation tool NexSym, Applied

Energy, 206, 1009-1021.

NexSym: A techno-ecological simulator for local FEW systems

Inter-sectoral flows

60,0

60,2

60,4

60,6

60,8

61,0

61,2

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

0 20 40 60

Wa

ter

leve

l

Bio

ma

ss

Heather biomass in ecosystem (kg/ha)

Water level (m above sea level)

States

0

5000

10000

15000

0

0,1

0,2

0,3

0,4

0,5

0,6

0,7

0 20 40 60

Millio

ns

Water from aquifer (m3/y)

CO2 capture Heathland (t/y)

Services

Ecosystem

Nutrients distribution

13

Life-cycle assessment of food products: confectionaries

14

Miah, J.H. et al. 2017, Environmental management of confectionery products: Impacts and improvement strategies. Submitted to: Journal of Cleaner Production.

GH

G (

kg C

O2

-eq

per

un

it)

Wat

er c

on

sum

pti

on

(m

3 p

er u

nit

)

Life-cycle assessment of food products: confectionaries

15

Life-cycle assessment of food products: confectionaries

16

ICI’s Pruteen: M methylotrophus

growing on methanol

ICI’s Pruteen process (Westlake 1986)

Rank Hovis McDougall (RHM)

Group’s Quorn: F Venenatum A3/5

growing on starch

UniBio’s UniProtein: methylotrophic

bacteria growing on natural gas

Life-cycle assessment of food products:proteins from biotechnology

17

Alternative protein product for animal feed

Alt. Product Alt. Product

Life-cycle assessment of food products:proteins from biotechnology

18Nicholas Cooper, 2015. Food without agriculture. Research project report, Dept. Eng. Sci., Uni. Oxford.

Alternative protein product for human consumption

Alt. Product Alt. Product

Alt. Product Chicken

Life-cycle assessment of food products:proteins from biotechnology

19

Outline

• The food, energy and water (FEW) challenges

• Managing the FEW nexus

• modelling and assessment

• integrated design

• Reflections: product and system innovation

20

Design of integrated local FEW systems

Design objective: minimising overall resource consumption for meeting local

demands, measured by cumulative exergy consumption

availability of local

and external

resources

demands by a

local

population

• What to produce locally, what to import?

• How to produce locally?

21

Leung et al.,(2017). Insight-based approach for the design of integrated local food-energy-water systems. Environmental Science & Technology, 51 (15), pp 8643–8653.

A hierarchical and iterative approach

Ecological

Agricultural

Industrial

Resource cascading

Integration (inter-subsystem

resource cascading use)

Synthesis (“basic” design)

Design of

Subsys.1

Design of

Subsys. 2

Design of

Subsystem 3

Leung et al.,(2017). Insight-based approach for the design of integrated local food-energy-water systems. Environmental Science & Technology, 51 (15), pp 8643–8653.

22

Design decisions and “resource gain”

Resource gain: quantifying resource benefit of decision options

𝑅𝐺 = 𝐶𝐸𝑥𝐶𝑎𝑙𝑡 − 𝐶𝐸𝑥𝐶𝑟𝑒𝑓

Principle: Adopting the option with (greatest) positive resource gain!

Design decisions

At subsystem level At inter-subsystem level

• Allocation of limited

resources

• Resource cascading use

• Re-generation/recycle

vs. disposal

• Re-generation vs. re-

purposing

• Import

or produce locally?

• Selection between

alternative technical

options

23

Case study – designing FEW system for an eco-town

Whitehill-Bordon, Surrey, UK

Population: 17,000

Agricultural area: 17 ha

Groundwater abstraction limit per year:

15 million tonnes

Annual demands (residential)

Clean water: 887,081 tonnes

Electricity : 90,254 GJ

Heat: 343,814 GJ

Foods (tonnes)

Bread 224

Potatoes 403

Beef 88

Pork 46

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Illustrative results of design

Sources of benefit• “Cheaper” local renewables vs.

imported conventional resources

• Local synergies• Full utilisation of residual

streams• Water/energy integration

Resource savings compared to

“conventional” system:

• Food subsystem: ~50%

• Water subsystem: ~50%

• Energy subsystem: ~100%

25

Outline

• The food, energy and water (FEW) challenges

• Managing the FEW nexus

• modelling and assessment

• integrated design

• Reflections: product and system innovation

26

Linking product’s impact to purpose

27

ChinaBelgium

UK

France

Netherlands

Belgium

Mauritius

Factory in NE England

Switzerland

Argentina

Japan

Italy

Germany

Spain

Poland

Brazil1 product with18 ingredients from14 countries

Rethinking system’s architecture

28

Managing multi-scales and multi-objectives

(e.g. local)

(e.g. regional)

(e.g. global)

29A. J. Veldhuis, A. Yang, Integrated approaches to the optimisation of regional and local food-energy-water systems. Current Opinion in Chemical Engineering 18C (2017) pp. 38-44

Integration vs. innovation

Foodenergy

water

climate

ecosystem

pollution

urbanisation

waste

transport

…

• Integrated decisions: boundaries• “Tension” between innovation

and integration?• Nexus thinking is to make

innovation more meaningful, not more difficult!

30

Summary

• Food, energy and water: basic needs, great challenges!

• Nexus means complexity, calling for integrated approaches.

• Product and systems innovation: needed for FEW security, to incorporate nexus thinking

31

Acknowledgements

Contributors• Elias Martinez-Hernandez• Hans Veldhuis• Melissa Y. Leung Pah Hang• Matthew Leach• Jamal Miah• Steven Morse• Jhuma Sadhukhan• Nicholas Cooper• Yuxi Yao• The Local Nexus Network

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