As the world faces challenges of water scarcity, pollution, and climate change, water stewardship is becoming an increasingly vital step in the sustainability framework. But what does water stewardship mean? It’s the responsible use, management, and protection of freshwater resources through a collaborative approach that involves multiple stakeholders, including customers, employees, supply chain, local governments, and communities.
Only 3% of Earth’s freshwater is available—with even less being treated for use.
Currently, four billion people live in water-scarce areas, and one in four cities face water insecurity. According to the United Nations, by 2030, global freshwater demand is expected to exceed supply by 40%—equivalent to a gap of about 2.7 billion cubic meters (see chart below)—and an estimated 1.6 billion people will lack safely managed drinking water.
The time to establish a sustainable water management strategy is now. This not only plays a crucial role in our world today—it’s core to our future development as well. Inaction on water commitments keeps our industry stagnant at a time when the world urgently needs us to take steps forward.
Designing your own water management strategy
How much water do you use to produce or provide services such as food, textiles, or technology? Understanding your water footprint is the primary way to measure your direct and indirect water usage throughout your full production cycle, from supply chain to end use.
Direct water use refers to the water consumed in processes that are directly part of your operations, such as manufacturing or services. Indirect water use encompasses the water used in the supply chain to produce raw materials or components that are eventually included in your product.
Measuring water consumption aligns with the first step on your path to better prioritizing water stewardship.
The first step in water management: Measurement
Measuring water usage can be a challenging exercise, but the visibility and improvement it enables are invaluable. In the end, your water management plan should include the following key elements:
- Understanding the current state (baseline)—Assess your current water use, including total consumption, water sources, and water intensity.
- Identifying areas for improvement—Analyze data to find high-consumption areas, especially in high water stress areas, and prioritize high-impact opportunities.
- Tracking progress—Set targets that align with reducing your consumption baseline, and regularly review and adjust your strategy.
Whether you’re a small, medium, or large enterprise, existing business systems and smart metering are key to collecting and aggregating water data. This not only helps establish your water baseline and identify areas of high consumption, but it also provides key stakeholders (e.g., facility managers) with the visibility they need to act.
The second step in water management: Reduction
With a baseline and an understanding of patterns of usage, the next step on your water management journey is about focusing on targeted efforts to reduce consumption. The table below outlines specific actions, along with their respective impacts on water management and conservation. These action items are general enough to be applicable and effective across different sectors.
The third step in water management: Replenish
Water conservation actions that restore or protect the ecosystem are additional measures that can support water balance when pursuing a neutral or positive approach (see table below for definitions). In simple terms, you're aiming to replenish the impact of the water consumption after exhausting all possible reduction alternatives, including those mentioned in the previous section.
Integrating energy and water: The biggest opportunity to differentiate
While various industries pursue lower-carbon energy sources, water impact is often not considered. But if your goal is to drive overall efficiency for your business, then it’s important to ensure your water management strategy integrates seamlessly with how you manage your energy resources. In fact, effective water stewardship can be a crucial factor in differentiating the feasibility of energy projects.
While many new energy systems are designed to reduce carbon emissions and are generally water efficient, assessing water consumption is core to avoiding overuse or waste. Our sustainable approaches in the coming years require this level of integration, along with deploying tech advancements that address emission reductions and water conservation in tandem. It’s these kinds of holistic strategies that will empower emerging solutions to rebalance the planet.
But don’t take our word for it, look at the graph above. It illustrates the freshwater use associated with various mineral and fuel production. You might be surprised to find that minerals such as lithium, rare earths, and copper—key components in clean energy tech such as electric vehicle batteries—have a notably higher water footprint than traditional energy sources. It’s for this reason that a lot of attention is being given to making the production of those “newer” minerals more sustainable.
Could produced water be the biggest circularity opportunity for the energy sector?
In the quest for a more circular economy—aimed at minimizing waste and maximizing resource efficiency—circularity offers the potential to transform traditional waste products into valuable resources. Produced water (water that comes out of the ground during extraction) presents a significant opportunity to enable circularity solutions, providing benefits for both environmental impact and business opportunities.
But produced water can be highly saline and may contain hydrocarbons, heavy metals, and other contaminants along with valuable minerals, which poses challenges in management. It’s for this reason that a rising portion of produced water in the US—where, according to Rystad Energy, volumes are projected to keep increasing through 2028—is now being managed through alternative solutions due to the environmental risks and resource waste associated with the more common saltwater disposal method.
This search for alternative solutions (circularity being one of them) is driven by the enforcement of stricter requirements on water use and disposal by many state and federal regulatory bodies, along with the fact that produced water also offers opportunities for resource recovery and reuse. So, what does applying the principles of circularity to produced water look like?
- Design out waste—Implement technologies that allow for downhole water separation, thereby generating value by reducing both the need for water treatment and CO2 emissions.
- Keep products and materials in use—Once treated, produced water can be reused. Additionally, produced water often contains valuable minerals like lithium, which can be extracted for use in industries such as battery manufacturing. Salts and other chemicals present can also be recovered and reused, lessening the need for raw material extraction.
- Regenerate natural systems—Preserve water bodies, such as aquifer recharge, by employing practices that ensure the return of treated produced water to the environment.
Despite these opportunities, challenges remain in unlocking the full potential of sustainable water stewardship in the produced water landscape. Challenges include
- the development of reliable, low-energy, and cost-effective desalination technologies
- the need for regulatory frameworks that support the reuse and recycling of produced water
- increased knowledge sharing to ensure all stakeholders (including the public) understand and support the reuse of treated produced water.
We must, however, press forward. Effective water stewardship is essential for ensuring resource sustainability and addressing global freshwater scarcity. And the more responsibly we manage new energy resources, with careful consideration of their water footprint alongside their carbon one, the closer we are to achieving our collective global impact goals.
Produced water represents significant opportunities for the circularity we strive for, but advancing governance is necessary if we wish to fully realize its benefits. It’s important that we design industrial water management approaches around the core steps of accurate measurement, reducing water use, and replenishment—and to remember that it’s never too early to start.
