Our role: to make the “couple” energy and water, one of the major challenges of sustainable development.
At the global level, after agriculture, the energy sector is thus the second largest user of water, even though it is necessary to distinguish between water withdrawals (with return to the middle) and water consumption.
Thus in the energy field, water is used for hydroelectric generation, and is needed for cooling of thermal power plants, extraction and refining of oil and gas products, as well as for the production of certain fuels such as biomass, ethanol or hydrogen.
In return, energy is essential to the entire cycle of water use by man: pumped extraction, transport, treatment, desalination, various uses, especially for irrigation or industry, and reprocessing of wastewater.
It is estimated that about 20% of the world’s electricity production is used to power pumps used for water lifting and transport. The treatment of wastewater / sanitation, represents a consumption of energy of the order of 1 to 10 kWh per cubic meter of water reprocessed, according to the initial and final qualities and the effects of scale.
WATERTECH SA aims to develop tools and a methodological framework (concept of water footprint) to assess, study and control the sustainable use of natural resources, common to all energy sectors: oil and gas, nuclear, renewable energies, including hydropower, applicable worldwide, which will make it possible to organize, at the level of each watershed, the development of energy solutions that are adapted, efficient and respectful of water resources.