Expert opinion on influential factors driving renewable energy adoption in the water industry

doi:10.1016/j.renene.2020.08.054

Renewable Energy

Volume 162, December 2020, Pages 754-765

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2020.08.054 Get rights and content

Highlights

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Cost reduction is main driver for renewable energy adoption in the water industry.
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Compulsory GHG emissions reduction is perceived as most influential policy.
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Support from local and state institutions highly influence renewable energy adoption.
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Future investments are most likely to focus on biogas generation and solar PV.

Abstract

Interest in renewable energy adoption in the water industry is growing amid numerous barriers. Overcoming these barriers requires an understanding of the influencing factors that drive renewable energy adoption, namely i) what drives the industry to uptake renewable energy projects, ii) what policies and regulations are perceived by the industry as effective in supporting this trend, and iii) what renewable energy technologies are preferred. To identify influencing factors, a survey was conducted of Australian professionals working in water and wastewater related fields. Reducing costs associated with energy consumption were perceived as the most significant factors influencing renewable energy projects. Respondents perceived compulsory greenhouse gas emissions reduction as the most influential policy. Respondents did not perceive any government financial policy or regulation established for the development of a renewable energy market as highly influential for the water industry. Among all respondents, biogas from sewage sludge and solar photovoltaic were considered the most important technologies available to the industry. Yet, the priority of these technologies differed between respondents working for water/wastewater utilities and the rest of respondents, as the former perceived biogas from co-digestion as the most important technology, while the rest perceived solar PV as the dominant technology.

Introduction

Increasing renewable energy adoption is a central tenet of Australia’s climate action program [1]. The Australian Commonwealth has pledged to generate 33,000 GWh from RE sources by 2020, equivalent to 23.5% of the anticipated national energy demand [2]. Australian States have set even more ambitious targets with Victoria and Queensland aiming for 50% of self-generated renewable electricity by 2030 [3,4], and South Australia aiming for 100% by 2030 [5]. These targets have stimulated the development of small to large-scale RE projects across the country [6].

RE targets have also affected how the Australian water industry is making investment decisions about projects. In 2018, the Australian water industry generated 18% of its own energy demand from RE sources [7]. Being one of the largest single users of electrical energy within cities, using up to 6.2% of regional electricity [8], continued investment in RE by the water industry could significantly contribute to meeting Australian and global generation targets. Moreover, water and wastewater utilities have committed to advancing sustainability through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) [9]. RE has a strong synergy with some of the SDGs [10], thus its successful deployment could advance the sustainable development of the water industry as a whole.

However, energy generation is not core business for the water industry. The adoption of RE sources by water and wastewater utilities can increase the technical and regulatory density of an already complex sector, for example, drawing energy-related regulations into operating requirements. Also, uncertainty around return on investment, unclear requirements of grid connection and difficulties to match the energy produced with the energy demand are just some of the uncertainties that are impacting investments in RE projects [11,12]. Whilst there is pressure to increase the adoption of RE, these uncertainties limit a widespread adoption of renewables in the water industry.

Informing these uncertainties will require an understanding of why and how water and wastewater utilities invest in RE. To understand why these utilities invest in renewables, it is important to identify the i) key driving factors and the ii) regulations and policies supporting these investments. How they invest in RE instead requires an understanding of the iii) RE technologies available to the industry.

To a limited extent, we can learn lessons from studies investigating key drivers of RE projects outside of the water sector. Common drivers emerging from these studies include growing electricity consumption [13], climate change mitigation, social awareness of sustainability [14], government initiatives [15] and resource recovery opportunities [16]. Yet, these studies also highlight how drivers are highly context specific [17]. This consideration, together with the scant attention given to the water industry, shows the need to identify the key factors driving the decision-making process specific to water and wastewater utilities.

Likewise, policies and regulations have a crucial role in stimulating the adoption of RE [18,19]. Enabling policies and incentive schemes provide cross-sector support to develop a RE markets, but they are not specifically targeted to the water sector [6,20]. The effectiveness of policies and regulations strongly depends on the influence they have on RE investments [21]. Understanding whether existing policies support the adoption of RE in the specific context of the water industry is fundamental for predicting and accounting for future generation in the sector.

The range of sector and non sector-specific RE technologies available to water and wastewater utilities is broad. Sector-specific options include biogas from wastewater [22], sewage sludge [23] and co-digestion [24]; and thermal heat from wastewater [25] and combined heat and power systems [26]. Water and wastewater utilities have shown, however, a growing interest for non sector-specific RE technologies, and in particular for solar photovoltaic (PV) [27]. Even though the literature reports applications for both sector and non sector-specific RE technologies, currently there is no information on how water and wastewater utilities adopt these technologies.

To fill these gaps, in this study, we examined experts’ opinions on factors influencing the decision-making process on RE projects in Australian water and wastewater utilities. Specifically, we aimed to understand the relative importance of i) a range of main driving factors, categorized as economic, regulatory, social, environmental and technical; and ii) a set of policies and regulations. Lastly, we investigated and ranked experts’ opinions on iii) preferred RE technologies for water and wastewater utilities at the present and in the future (10 years). These aims were achieved by undertaking a survey of water and wastewater professionals in Australia. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to analyse the specific driving factors of RE uptake in this sector. This study also identifies, for the first time, some of the policies, regulations and laws perceived as influential. This analysis provides policy and decision makers the tools necessary to understand how water and wastewater professionals perceive and participate in renewable electricity generation.

Section snippets

Methods

A survey of Australian water professionals was developed and undertaken as a component of the international project “Opportunities and Barriers for Renewable and Distributed Energy Resource Development at Drinking Water and Wastewater Utilities” - Water Research Foundation Project 4625 [28]. This investigation aimed to provide knowledge and resources to guide utilities, related stakeholders and policy makers interested in pursuing RE technologies. While Project 4625 reports general survey

Sample characteristics

Background information of the survey respondents is summarised in Table 2. A sample of 56 responses for Australia was obtained. Of these 56, 28 respondents worked for a water and/or wastewater utility (U) and 30 respondents had less than 15 years of experience. Queensland (QLD, n = 22), Victoria (VIC, n = 14) and New South Wales (NSW, n = 13) were the States obtaining the highest number of responses (Fig. 1).

Q1: Opinion of respondents on objectives and drivers

One of the central aims of this research was to understand and characterise experts’

Conclusions

This research highlights the complexity of factors that influence the decision-making process of the water industry regarding RE technologies. On the basis of experts’ opinions, the results show that investments in RE technologies are mainly motivated by financial reasons (77%, 86%), which is consistent with findings for North America [28]. Considering that electricity is the second main expenditure for water and wastewater utilities, it is reasonable to conclude that if electricity prices

CRediT authorship contribution statement

A. Strazzabosco: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing - original draft, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Project administration, Funding acquisition. S.A. Conrad: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Funding acquisition. P.A. Lant: Conceptualization, Writing - review & editing, Visualization, Supervision. S.J. Kenway: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing - review & editing, Supervision, Funding acquisition.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgment

This research was funded by an Australian Postgraduate Award scholarship provided by The University of Queensland and a top-up scholarship funded by the Water Research Foundation Project 4625. The authors would like to thank Einat Grimberg and Dr. Catherine Macintosh for helpful discussions and suggestions. Dr Kenway acknowledges DE160101322 funding.

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