Josh Sperling

By Josh Sperling and Will Sarni

A safe, secure and affordable water future—for life, health, economy—are foundational outcomes from a new form of ethics for water stewardship and energy management. Current business as usual in water and energy systems have not led to sustainable, healthy nor resilient pathways for urban and rural communities alike. Today, an estimated 400 million people live in cities with significant water shortages. This is while 25% of water is currently lost before even used in urban areas (up to 60% in some cities) due to aging infrastructure. In addition, on average, only 10% of wastewater is treated before returning to water bodies in developing countries. By 2040, more than 66% of the world’s populations could suffer from severe water shortages; and by 2050, an 80% increase in urban water demand (over current levels) may result in one billion city dwellers and 36% (one in three) of cities expected to face water crises. A crisis is often a catalyst for innovation and this chapter is a call to cities to enable strategic responses—moving away from legacy ‘siloed’ infrastructures, over-allocated water resources and emerging ethical dilemmas to integrated water- and energy-related urban nexus strategies.

Part of the book: Water and Sustainability

By Will Sarni and Josh Sperling

New management choices, with new approaches to urbanization and integrated water-energy-food management, are emerging as critical to combat water stress. Urban strategies and tactics are explored in this chapter with a focus on scaling effective solutions and approaches. This includes a focus on small, modular, and integrated water-energy-food hubs; off-grid and localized “circular economy” services that are affordable, accessible, and reliable; blended finance for new technologies, infrastructure and business models, strategic plans, and policies; and urban, behavioral, and decision sciences-informed decisions and new public-private-research-driven partnerships and processes. There are two key messages: first, business as usual could lead to “running out” of water where it’s needed most—in cities and for agricultural and industrial production. Second, “innovators” and “early adopters” of market-based and data-driven efforts can help scale solutions led by people and communities investing in new ways to integrate urban water, energy, and food systems. The chapter concludes with discussion on a new, proactive “maturity” model, enabling integrated urban infrastructure systems, governance, and cross-sector innovation. This includes market-based and data-driven responses that first focus on improving quality of life, sustainability, and resilience of communities, bringing valued services via water-energy-food nexus decisions.

Part of the book: Water and Sustainability

By Josh Sperling and Alejandro Henao

High-mileage vehicles serving airports offer significant potential for the electrification of transportation, in ways that enhance the affordability and sustainability of mobility for people and electric vehicle infrastructure development. As one example, by mid-2018, transportation network company (TNC) electric vehicles (EVs) in California—as a high-mileage mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) vehicle platform—was estimated to represent 30% of total non-Tesla EV charging demand, despite being only 0.5% of EVs in the State, and having sixty times higher levels of charging energy demand relative to the other EVs. This chapter explores the potential importance of this phenomena, the emergence of urban electric mobility developments and the co-benefits for economic, environment and equity. Through focus on the synergies of electrification with shared-use vehicles and trips, and with mobility options that include higher mileage, utilization, and occupancy, this chapter identifies emerging concepts that will have potential for impacting adoption rates, management, modeling and control for urban electric mobility systems. More specifically, this chapter explores emerging trends at and adaptations for airports. City airports, as critical hubs for TNC trip demand, and engines of regional economic growth, may be a critical locale for siting fast-charging infrastructure and planning new urban electric mobility operations across many metropolitan areas and cities of the United States and globally.

Part of the book: Intelligent and Efficient Transport Systems