Shifting perspectives and embracing water-energy nexus innovation

The water-energy nexus has been a buzzword for water professionals for well over a decade. Utility directors, operators and the engineers who design water and wastewater systems are all too familiar with the energy costs associated with treating drinking water and cleaning wastewater to protect public health.

At the forefront of this conversation is Kelley Vandeland, vice president of marketing and sustainability at Energy Recovery, the first of a handful of women Wastewater Digest is featuring in March for Women's History Month.Wastewater Digest features these women to highlight their expertise, share perspectives, and show how women are influencing a market traditionally dominated by male professionals.

Vandeland started her career in the power sector prior to her entry in the water market. This background in energy, and her expertise from that world, show water professionals a vision of improved energy use, sustainable processes and a potential endgame for water's future in the U.S.

Did you find water or did water find you?

Water found me via energy, which is, if you think about the water-energy nexus, it kind of makes sense. I actually, prior to water, was working in solar project development. And I was doing a lot of work, a lot of conversation. I was more in public affairs and a lot of conversations around water-energy nexus. What does that look like? How did energy policy need to intersect with water policy? Particularly, this was in California, but it's true regardless of where you are, and [I] got introduced to Energy Recovery through a friend of a friend.

And it just so happened there was an opportunity, and it's been a really interesting ride because now Energy Recovery is not actually just doing water work. We're in the refrigeration industry as well. So yeah, I think water found me, but it was kind of already talking water via energy.

Did you expect that you would enjoy the water industry as much as you seem to have and, and if so, why water compared to energy, for example?

I think for me — and maybe this sounds a bit nerdy — but for me the things that have always been fascinating are the industries that sort of underpin everything else. Without water, without energy, nothing else happens; nothing else works. And both of those industries are in a state of transition in response to climate change and response to population shifts, and there's a lot of different dynamics that mean that the innovation that has to happen, and is already happening in those industries, and for me, personally, it is very interesting.

I saw a lot of parallels, and I felt like I'd learned a lot about the power sector. And an opportunity presented to go learn about the water sector, which to be honest, I think is in some ways even more complex because you have wastewater treatment, you have desalination, you have reuse. There's lots of different dynamics and different facets of the water industry. 

So there's parallels to power, but I I found it actually even more interesting just from all the different complexities you have to think through.

You can view it quite broadly in the same way you can view power, but then it gets more and more localized, and water especially can be so hyper-localized with its regulatory environments.

Correct. Yeah, depending on what you're doing and where you are and how you're thinking about your water strategies, and I think Energy Recovery, for me, is an interesting place to be because we offer solutions across the board.

We've got solutions for saving energy and seawater desalination, which is where we started, but we now have solutions for zero liquid discharge, ultra high pressure wastewater treatment as well as lower pressure reverse osmosis water reuse processes.

So it's been interesting because we play across a range of different types of water aspects for the industry.

In your role, how do you feel you've been able to influence either the industry or Energy Recovery?

I lead Energy Recovery's marketing team as well as our sustainability program. So I have kind of both hats on, and I work very closely with other parts of our team — product development, sales strategy and so on.

Since I've been here — it's one of the things I'm most proud of — we've really expanded beyond our initial core offering, which was energy recovery devices for customers. I'm excited to be part of that and to be part of offering solutions that I think lots of different parts of the water industry are trying to look to for ways to do things more sustainably, but also to adapt to the reality that there's just not enough water for people. All projections suggest that, right?

So to adapt in a way that is also the most economic [as] possible for ratepayers, and a huge piece of that is how efficiently you use energy, and that's where we come in. And my excitement is to be part of a team that's really working closely together both from a marketing standpoint to answer what are our customers' needs or from a product development standpoint asking how do we build a really high quality set-it-and-forget-it type of device so no one ever has to worry when their plant is running. If they've got Energy Recovery, it's going to work. That's been a really fun aspect. 

And so I think for me to kind of circle back, I've been part of a team that's been able to bring products to market that are really high quality and address a really key need, which is energy use. The industry is adapting in general to these challenges, but trying to provide a solution to allow that transition to happen has been a a great part of the ride with Energy Recovery.

The water industry tends to be rather conservative in how quickly it adopts things. Is there a perspective or a belief that you see throughout the industry that you wish could be shifted or changed?

You know, it does tend to be conservative. However, I think that across all different facets, there are those early adopters who are really trying to change things. Maybe it's because they see an opportunity to operate in a different way that's more cost effective and maybe more resilient. Or they are facing regulatory requirements and they have to adapt, right? Like there may be different reasons for it.

But I do think, and this is maybe where you come in, by really shining a light on those people that are embracing innovative approaches to try and shed that conservative image. 

And I think the other thing for me that is really kind of critical — and you see this in power too — is where you have a lot of strong opinions of "Water reuse is the only thing we should be doing to go forward," and "No! Desalination is the only thing we should be doing to go forward," right? There's a lot of strong opinions that one way is the only way.

I think you've probably heard the term all the above energy strategy. I think we need an all of the above water strategy, and to me, that would include everything, it's desal, it's reuse, there's a lot of different facets to that.

And if the industry moved forward in that way, and kind of worked together versus entrenching in their own particular preferences, I suspect that we'd be able to move faster to meeting the challenges that are facing us.

As you would say in a financial context, you want to diversify your portfolio.

Correct. Right! And I've seen you cover these types of reports as well, but you know the reality that we're all facing is a massive shortfall of freshwater in the coming decades, and we don't have time to move slow.

Well maybe that's teeing up this next one, which is what is your moonshot vision for the future of the water industry?

Oh man. Great. You got some good ones this morning. So if I think about what would be an absolutely incredible kind of end result — and I don't know if we can get there — it would be if you can almost get to a point where you have a continual, closed loop of reuse of water across the board. I think there's been some places — I think about the water reuse programs in Singapore, for example — that you see sort of flickers of that, but that to me is critical.

Plus, you also need to have desalination that's done in the most sustainable way possible to make up the shortfalls, right?

But I think it would be incredible if you can get to a point where you have reuse happening in almost every aspect of the globe and being done in a way that is very energy efficient such that it's not adding to emissions, it's not increasing climate change concerns, it's being done in a very almost net-zero fashion.

How we get there? It's a big ask, but that is sort of ultimately, if you think about where the trends are, where the challenges that are facing this industry, trying to get there in a way that's economic for ratepayers, I think would be the ultimate goal.

So then what role do you want to play in trying to achieve that moonshot vision?

So [with] the PX pressure exchanger, which is the Energy Recovery device that we first brought on the market 30 years ago for seawater reverse osmosis desalination, it really was a game changer. It lowered the energy costs by up to 60%. It made the process commercially viable because energy was the largest source of cost in running it.

And today many industries can benefit from using the PX both to improve performance and environmental sustainability. And what we do across the board for the solutions that we have is we save energy, we lower costs, and we minimize emissions. In any type of reuse, wastewater treatment, any type of sort of closed loop system, you're having to pressurize, and that takes energy.

And so I think our role is a facilitator in lowering the energy requirements, and lowering the cost, which I think is how you actually start to get towards that vision in a way that doesn't cost a fortune.

What lessons do you feel we can learn from the power sector and bring over to water? When you think about energy, what about the energy market is something that they do well that you ask "Why doesn't water do that?"

I wouldn't say that this is complete by any stretch, but there have been attempts or progress — at least in the United States and Europe, and Europe does this particularly well — there's been progress towards multistate management of power. So exporting power across state lines and doing it in a very integrated fashion.

So for example, if one state is producing a ton of wind power, but it doesn't need it, there's a way to export it to another place that does need it. It's not perfect, but that sort of integrated management and really thinking about the use of the resource — as you mentioned earlier the hyper local nature of water — really, using the resource efficienty and thinking about policy beyond just that one little region I think could really benefit the water industry in some places. I think there's opportunities for that.

And there is differences. It's obviously a little faster to export power than it is to send water through pipes, but I think that sort of integrated approach and that more macro approach towards thinking about policy would help the water industry overall respond to some of the challenges that we're facing.