Xylem Inc., a leading water technology company, recently released a white paper titled The Race We All Win: Mapping the route to water utility decarbonization. The white paper outlines four practical steps for water utilities can take to achieve net-zero targets without taking financing and contracts into consideration. Austin Alexander, vice president of sustainability and social impact at Xylem Inc., presented this information to Canadian Water Network’s (CWN) Net-Zero Strategic Sharing Group in February 2023.

Austin’s presentation started with the importance of collaboration between water utilities and water technology providers to approach the common goal of achieving net-zero emissions. Decarbonization in water utilities should be viewed as an opportunity to increase electricity efficiency, biogas creation and aeration energy optimization, among other benefits. Austin reiterated that the net-zero journey is a process that starts with setting realistic targets, optimizing energy and resources, prioritizing capital planning and planning for the future.

Several key takeaways emerged from the meeting, including:

• The importance of establishing corporate greenhouse gas inventories first, which many of our member municipalities and utilities are currently undertaking. However, they also identified that there are challenges with quantifying greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide.
• There may be unintended consequences of increasing energy efficiency during the treatment process, such as increased process emissions.
• Greenhouse gas emissions can also come from municipalities or utilities that distribute water and collect wastewater and need to be considered.
• Some municipalities are already using GHG emissions data, energy consumption, energy audits and demand management plans for cost recovery purposes.

CWN’s Net-Zero Strategic Sharing Group is scheduled to meet again in August 2023 to continue discussions on the journey of water utilities toward net-zero by exploring actions and practices toward decarbonization. We will also have a session dedicated to this topic during CWN’s Blue Cities conference in October.

CWN would like to know which municipalities/utilities are monitoring nitrous oxide in process emissions. If your municipality or utility is undertaking this, please contact Jessica Akande at [email protected]