Wingspread
Water Conservation at Wingspread
Those of you who live in arid climates may find this hard to believe, but in the parts of Wisconsin that lie along Lake Michigan, water conservation isn't talked about much. Milwaukee is working hard to be an international water technology hub, supplying innovation to industry around the globe. But at the same time, the city is trying to attract water intensive industry by greatly reducing the price of its water for new industrial users and the closest that we come to hear
Read MoreThe Value of Clean Water: A Superior Perspective
What’s water worth? It’s a frequent topic of conversation in my professional circles and perhaps yours as well.
Read MoreBig Vision: Re-inventing America's Urban Water Infrastructure
I can't help but be hopeful about our ability to solve our country's overwhelming water challenges when I see the extraordinarily gifted and committed people trying to tackle these problems. It's one of the great parts of my job - to find these experts and to try to figure out how to help them advance their ideas.
Read MoreGood Guy Wins Big - Steve Carpenter Awarded Stockholm Water Prize
I love it when the good guy wins, and today a very good guy won big. This morning I learned that Stephen R. Carpenter, Professor of Zoology and Limnology and faculty member in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is being awarded the 2011 Stockholm Water Prize.
Steve’s input and wisdom, gained from a lifetime of work on the ecology of aquatic systems, has been fundamental to The Johnson Foundation’s freshwater work. Despite his very busy schedule, he agreed to join us for one of our initial convenings in March, 2009 when we assembled a group of (mostly) scientists to address questions such as “What key problems are we facing in the US with freshwater systems and services?” and “which of these challenges are driven or exacerbated by climate change?”
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Bringing Water to the Desert
Las Vegas may not be the place you’d expect to go for a meeting on water and agriculture, but that’s where I was last week. The Family Farm Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated the preservation and enhancement of Western irrigated agriculture, was hosting its annual meeting there last week and invited me to moderate a panel on Charting New Waters. And since agriculture is the second largest user of water in the country (after power generation), this was an invitation I quickly accepted.
The four panelists who joined me each had been involved with The Johnson Foundation’s Freshwater Forum in recent years, and each had a different perspective on why the recommendations and process behind Charting New Waters are critical to achieving freshwater sustainability for the United States.
Read MoreWater Smart, Energy Smart: Griffiths-Sattenspiel is both
When you drive by an empty office building at night and see lights left on, you probably think about the energy that’s being wasted, but do you also think about the water that’s wasted while the electric meter spins? When you weigh your transportation options, you probably think about convenience, cost, and energy impacts, but do you think about water impacts?
Earlier this week, Bevan Griffiths-Sattenspiel, co-author of “The Carbon Footprint of Water”, a report on the tight relationship between water and energy consumption released last year by River Network, addressed a crowd at Wingspread. Like a hydrant opened on a hot summer day, Bevan poured forth with numbers, charts, trends, and images.
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Setting it Straight on Wind Energy
Wind farms are a common sight here in Wisconsin, and Milwaukee recently landed a contract to manufacture wind turbine components, so I naturally thought my adopted state was a leader in wind energy. Wrong.
Jeff Anthony of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) recently spoke to a packed house at Wingspread and set me straight. While the US is currently the lead nation in wind energy generation (with China predicted to surpass us shortly), Wisconsin sits in the middle of the pack for “installed capacity” relative to other U.S. states. The leading state is, not surprisingly, T. Boone Pickens’ home state of Texas. But I was surprised to learn that next in line is Iowa. Yes, Iowa. Iowa captures more wind energy thanCalifornia!
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