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ali zaidi: so, thankyou all for joining. this is, i think, anexciting opportunity to get folks together and havea conversation about an incredibly important issue. it's also a very timelymoment for us to be getting together. just a few days ago, afteryears of hard work by lots and lots of people, theworld came together in paris, and came togetheraround a historic,
and ambitious, and enduringagreement to take real action on climate change. the agreement is a tributeto american leadership -- to the president's leadership. it's also a tribute toamerican innovation. the set of targets and goalsthat were agreed upon are possible, andwill be possible, because of businesses --because of scientists, engineers, innovators, andinvestors working together
to unlock the set oftechnologies that are needed for us to meet the challengeof a changing climate. but paris is also a reminderof all the work we still have left to do, and just inthe same way that investment and innovation are going tobe powering our ability to meet bold emissions targets,they're going to be critical ingredients to our abilityto adapt to a changing climate. and that's why we'regathered here together today, just a few daysafter the paris agreement,
to see how we can deploythat successful innovation playbook that we've seen inthe mitigation technology space, into theadaptation arena. for the obamaadministration, this is a proven playbook. just five years ago, iremember the skepticism we faced when we launchedthe sun shot initiative. we said we would make solarcost-competitive with fossil fuels by 2020.
but innovators and investorsrose to the challenge, and partnering withthe federal government, we're -- the price of solaris less than half from when the initiative began,and last year alone, solar installationsclimbed 30%. there are nearly 200,000jobs in the sector, and solar jobs are growingat a pace that is 10 times faster than therest of the economy. so today's goal is tosee how we can take the
learnings from that approachand apply that strategy of deploying thetechnologies we have, and laying the foundationfor game-changing breakthrough technologiesin the adaptation sector. and in particular, we'retackling an issue that is inescapable, and that isthe challenge around water resources. it was remarkable how manyrooms the conversation around water cropped up in,as we were negotiating in
paris, and there's a --there's a certain irony in the fact that we liveon this blue marble, and water is such asignificant issue for communities already -- forso many communities around the united statesand around the world. that is not somethingthat is going to change, and in fact, climate putsadditional pressure on those water resources. fortunately, we havea way to respond.
through innovation, we canpioneer the solutions and the technologies that aregoing to help us adapt. so with that, i'd like toinvite for some opening remarks, the president'schief science and technology advisor, someone who wasalso over in paris the last couple of weeks, andi'm sure also found that adaptation, resilience, andin particular the challenges around water resources werefront-of-mind for folks all around the world.
and this is going to bea critical part of the discussion going forward. dr. holdren? (applause) john holdren: well,thank you ali, and thanks to the wholeteams at omb, ceq, ostp and the relevantagencies who have helped pull this alltogether today. it really is apleasure to be here,
to help open a discussion ofchallenges around water and how innovationcan address them. for about 36 years, i taughta course on environmental science and policy, firstat berkeley and then at harvard. and the first lecture, ialways told the students that the numbersaren't everything. the physical dimensions of aproblem are never the whole story, but they're usuallyan important part of the story. and so i want to start thismorning by putting the water
issue in a quantitativeglobal context with a few numbers. i hope this doesn't causetoo many eyes to glaze over. i start with the fact thatglobal runoff of fresh water -- that's precipitationminus evaporation -- amounts to about 50,000 cubickilometers of fresh water per year. about a sixth ofthat, by the way, falls on north america:mexico, the unites states,
and canada combined. i should say that a cubickilometer is a billion cubic meters, and a cubicmeter is 264 gallons, if you want to convert thosenumbers to more familiar units. but the key point i wantto make about this overall number of 50,000 cubickilometers of runoff, is that three-quartersof it is lost, either because it'sgeographically unavailable, or because it's lostto storm runoff.
and so we're actuallyleft for human use, a runoff of about 12,000cubic kilometers per year. the interesting thingis that of that amount, around 2010, humans werealready withdrawing for human use 5,000 cubickilometers out of the 12,000. forty-two percent of thetotal available freshwater runoff on the planet wasalready being used by humans around 2010. and of thosewithdrawals
-- 5,000 cubic kilometers ayear -- 70 percent was for agriculture, worldwide. fraction in the unitedstates a little higher than that, closer to 75 percent. twenty percentwas for industry. ten percent was for domesticuse -- residential uses of water, andinterestingly enough, only a tenth of apercent was for drinking. humans drink five cubickilometers of water per
year, tenth of a percent ofthe 5,000 that we withdraw. u.s. withdrawals perperson, at about 2,000 cubic metersper person per year, are twice those of italy. they're four timesthose of china, and they're 40 times thoseof nigeria, per person, just to put these thingsin some perspective. water issues inthe united states, obviously have verystrong regional
and local dimensions. runoff and reservoirstorage are highly uneven. most decisions about waterallocation and management in the united states aremade by state, local, and tribal authorities whoknow and understand the needs of theircommunities and regions, but the stakeholders and theauthorities who are on the front line of dealingwith existing and emerging stresses on the watersystem don't always have the
information they need. they don't always have thetools they need to deal with water challenges, and that'sone of the reasons that there's an importantrole for the u.s. federal government to playin supporting those decision makers, not least by fundingresearch and development that harnesses americaningenuity and innovation, to help overcome the waterchallenges that some regions of the united statesthat some regions are
experiencing already. and that brings me to thetheme of today's meeting, which is the role thatinnovative technologies and innovative practices canplay in addressing water issues. and i want to spend just afew minutes framing that set of challenges in the contextof climate change -- how climate change isexacerbating a number of the challenges that we facein the water domain. there are six specificaspects of climate change
that i want to mention, thathave significant impacts on the hydrologic cycle and thehuman uses of its flows for the purposes thati just mentioned. those impacts varyby region, naturally. everything in thisdomain varies by region. but in general, in awarming world we can expect, first of all, increasedevaporation from soil, from lakes, fromreservoirs and rivers, which decreases theavailability of fresh water.
secondly, we can expectshifting patterns in the atmospheric circulation,that together with uneven warming and unevenevaporation, will alter the geographicdistribution of water availability. thirdly, more moisture inthe atmosphere overall -- the fact that a warmeratmosphere can hold more water -- means more watercan come down at once, and we are already seeingthis in an increase in
torrential downpours. that in turn increaseslosses to storm runoff -- never mind the floodingeffects -- but it increases the fraction of water thatis lost to storm runoff. a fourth effect is thatmore precipitation in the mountains is falling asrain, rather than as snow. that reduces snow-pack, andthus summer and fall runoff from snow melt that manycommunities and many ecosystems depend on.
another factor, of course,is early melting of the snow pack in the spring --earlier melting of the snow pack in the spring -- again,reducing fall and summer runoff. and finally, in someparts of the world, temperature -inducedshrinkage of the mountain glaciers that feed many ofthe worlds' great rivers. those impacts all imposestresses on the water system. they can increasewithdrawals. they cause slower rechargerates for groundwater
aquifers, reductions insurface water available for human and ecological uses-- the uses that ecosystems make of water, whichwe dare not forget. and also, often reductionsin water quality, which come from the sameamount of pollution, but lower flow inwhich to dilute it. and that's just thesupply side, of course. on the demand side, we havea situation where as demand for water rises, it becomesharder to maintain local
supplies in the face ofcompeting demands -- demands of power plant cooling, ofindustry, of residences, of agriculture. and of course, asi just suggested, local demands for water forall of these purposes have to be balanced against theneed to leave water in the system to support the healthof the ecosystems that live there, and on which wedepend for a wide variety of services.
the infrastructurefor transporting, storing and distributingwater is also under multiple stresses, including thosefrom climate change -- the effects of climate changeon the water infrastructure itself, or oninfrastructures like electric power andtelecommunications, that the watersystems depend on. it's been estimated thatan average of 16 percent of u.s. water is lost due to leaksand inefficiencies in the
water infrastructure, whichis an amount equivalent to the water demand in our 10largest cities in the united states. lot of loss to leakage. and that, of course, bringsbe back to the theme of the round table today, which ishow innovation can help us in dealing with the supplyside, the demand side, and the infrastructureaspects of the water challenges i just mentioned-- all the more demanding
because of climate change. let me give just a coupleof examples of the potential contribution ofinnovation: better sensors, that allow public utilitiescommissions and other stakeholders to quicklydetect and repair leaks in water infrastructure. those could dramatically cutthe 16 percent losses that i just mentioned. innovative materials forpipes and coatings could
prevent leaks and weaknessesof other sorts from occurring inthe first place. innovation in the designof appliances and other equipment that use watercan boost water end-use efficiency. there are numerousopportunities for combining new technology withthe internet of things, to leverage evengreater efficiencies. this past september, theadministration announced a
new "smart cities"initiative that will invest over $160 million to helpaddress key challenges, and transform energy andresource use in our cities. and of course, that'sgoing to include water. i think we're going to findthere's going to be really, enormous potential tooptimize water use in the urban environments oftoday and of tomorrow. on the supply side,innovation will help us tap additional andnontraditional sources of
water: brackish groundwater,municipal wastewater, urban andagricultural runoff, waters produced from oil andgas operations -- to help meet overall demand. and it's important to know-- to understand -- that technology to do muchof that already exists. we already have a lot ofthe needed technology. water recycling is alreadycommon for purposes like irrigation and power plantcooling all across the
united states. but we need innovation andwe need entrepreneurship to build on the technologiesthat we already have. one way innovation cancontribute is in the scaling up of some of theexisting technologies, the facilitation oftheir broader adoption. we need innovation andentrepreneurship to help us pair existing technologieswith the water resources we already have, to betteraddress the water stresses
that we're already facing. and we need innovation todevelop new technology that can provide waterat lower cost. it's interesting toconsider desalination, which everybody wants totalk about in the context of the water issue. i will note again inthe quantitative domain, that global desaltingcapacity today, in 2015, is about 25 cubickilometers per year.
that's five times theglobal drinking water need, but it's one-twentieth ofthe domestic use, globally, and it's one-one hundred andfiftieth of the water use in agriculture. fresh water produced viathe desalination methods available today is fourtimes more expensive, requires three timesmore electricity, and emits or leads to theemission of twice the level of greenhouse gasesassociated
with traditional water supply. new innovative technologiesclearly could help close that gap, and this will becertainly an important focus of research and developmentin the water space going forward. that innovation will alsobe needed to dispose in sustainable ways of theconcentrated brines that result fromdesalination systems. i think we allunderstand, though,
that no one technology -- noone innovation -- will be a silver bullet for the waterchallenges facing our nation and indeed, countriesaround the world. just as this administrationhas adopted an "all of the above" approachto clean energy, an "all of the above"approach is going to be required to ensure a secureand sustainable water future. and that approach willhave to be grounded in integrated, science-baseddecision-making at regional
scales, and again withinthe context of a changing climate. the approach will need tobe strongly informed by the expertise and the needs of abroad range of stakeholders at the state, local,and tribal levels, and in the public,private, nonprofit, and academic sectors. that's why the white houseorganized this round table today, not just to talk atyou but to talk with you.
and we certainly don'tplan to stop this kind of engagement withtoday's event. in fact, i'm pleased toannounce that my office, the office of scienceand technology policy, together with othercomponents in the executive office of the president,will be hosting a white house water summit onmarch 22nd of 2016, which is world water day, tocontinue the dialogue that we will be having today.
in the lead up tothat water summit, we're calling forcommitments from the private sector and other stakeholdergroups that will advance innovative solutionsto water issues. my staff has alreadyinitiated discussions with many of the people in thisroom to help inform that summit, and we're lookingforward to continuing to work closely with all of youin the lead up to that event in march.
so thanks again to all ofyou participating in today's round table. i look forward to hearingabout the results of these discussions. i won't be able tostay for much of it, but it is now a greatpleasure -- and i will stay for her -- to introducethe secretary of interior, sally jewell. (laughter)
her bio is in your folders. she is doing a fabulousjob as the secretary of interior. it's a huge pleasure for meto have her as a colleague. sally? sally jewell:thank you, john. and welcome toall of you today. there's a lot of peoplehanging out there. do you want tocome into the room,
or do you just want to behanging in the hallway? oh, you want tohang in the hallway. okay. whatever. as you wish. so, it's great to be here,and i want to thank my colleague, ali zaidi at omb,for his really hard work on this, and his teammatesshara and min, who've been workinghard on this,
as well as colleaguesat ostp and ceq. we're full of alphabetsoup here in the federal government -- office ofscience and technology policy, office ofmanagement and budget, council onenvironmental quality. i represent the departmentof the interior, and i'll give you a littlebit of a sense of why we're here, which may not beobvious to everyone. but i do want to say thatone of the reasons we're
here is that we have alot to do with water, and my right arm in thedepartment -- broadly and particularly onwater issues, is deputy secretarymike connor, and you'll be hearing fromhim a little bit later. he's ably assisted by asenior counselor on his hallway, and that's lettybelin -- just wave, letty, so that they see you. and we also have with uskind of the architect from
our side of a lotof these efforts, and that is tom iseman. he's the deputy assistantsecretary for water and science. tom's in the back there. so those are thego-to people, if you find them onbreaks and so on, and you have questions. and of course, mike will beup here in a little bit with more comments on apanel discussion.
so water is a hugechallenge in this country, and i think weall know that. and we're not going to solveit as a federal government, even though we're workingacross agencies like noaa and epa and the usgs,which is part of interior, and the ag department. it's important that wehave all hands on deck, and that we work closelywith other partners, and that's a big part ofwhat i want to talk about today.
so department of interiorhas a big hand in water in the west. in the last century,billions of dollars were invested in infrastructure,and a lot of that infrastructure is under thestewardship of the bureau of reclamation, which is part of the department of the interior. other big water manager,largely for flood control, is u.s. army corps of engineers. but you think about grandcoulee dam, hoover dam,
glen canyon dam -- the bigones that generate power and also manage water -- thoseare bureau of reclamation, along with over 400 others. so we're veryinvolved in this, and the investments havebeen traditionally in the past, and not somuch in the future, and we feel that nowin terms of the lack of efficiency -- the leaks,as dr. holdren mentioned -- some of the other challengesthat we have
to our infrastructure. but nonetheless, we are thelargest supplier of water in the western united states,and we're dependent on it. by states, by tribes,by communities, agricultural andcommercial users, and we also -- it's part ofour job to maintain healthy natural landscapesand habitats, which also vie for the samewater that everybody else wants right now.
so we are investing in r&d. it's never quite as muchas we hope in every budget year, but we are continuingto do some of the things dr. holdren talked about,in terms of stretching our water supplies farther,being smarter about that infrastructure, and we'realso doing a better job of measuring. so the u.s. geological survey, part ofthe department of interior,
has been responsible forover 100 years in things like stream gauges, whichwe all rely on -- sometimes very low-tech. i've seen them asi've been hiking, and along some of thewaterways here in the east. they've been around formore than a hundred years, and then of coursehigher-tech versions. but they're also usingdata from space to help us measure groundwater.
believe it or not, you canmeasure groundwater from space. they're helping usunderstand the dryness in the landscapes througha tool that measures evapo-transpiration. so they're usingscience at every level, from on the groundto in the air, to help us understandwhat's going on, because you can't managewhat you can't measure, and we've got to know what'sgoing on, on the ground.
so usgs is a big-- is a big player. so, ben franklin said,"when the well is dry, we learn theworth of water, " and i think that's veryclear -- has been very clear in the last few years. we are at a time of profounddrought, as you know. i look daily at the droughtin the united states, and the state of californiawas pretty much completely in an exceptional droughtsituation -- that's the
highest level of droughtthat we've had over the course of this year, withjust a little bit of easing up in the el nino stuff thatwe've seen, but not enough, certainly, tochange a pattern. we have the driest 16-yearperiod right now in the colorado river basin, interms of the inflows to the river, that we'veexperienced over the time we've had measurements --so the last hundred years. and we're in some of theworst drought situations
that we've experiencedin the paleo record, that goes backabout 1,200 years. so we've got some verysignificant challenges, and you're all experts, soyou could be giving this speech. john talked about impacts ofclimate: too much water in some areas, too littlewater in other areas, tremendous variability. we've got populationgrowth pressures. we've got pressurefor development.
and we have not invested inour water infrastructure in the way that we didin the last century, and it's catching up to us. so they're having areal effect everywhere, from reallyobviously california, but also across to texas,and in some parts of the country where they'regetting too much water. and -- so we have alot of work to do. i come from thepacific northwest.
we had this giant reservoir. it was called snowand snow pack. that is not behaving theway it always used to, and even in thecourse of my lifetime, i see dramatic changes as igo through the mountains in the cascades. sierra nevada -- incredibleto fly over there, as i'm sure many of you didover the course of the last year -- and see nosnow whatsoever,
and lake meade at its lowestlevel since it was being filled up --since the 1930's. so, lots going on, and we'vegot to put a few solutions on the table, and i'm hereto talk to you about a few of those. as you've seen, justrepresented by the three of us that have been atthe podium so far, we're taking anall-in approach, and it's something thepresident has encouraged us
to do. we are making strategicinvestments in science and monitoring, as imentioned, with the usgs. we are managing the limitedwater supplies we have through being as flexibleas we can operationally. and for those of you -- anyof you from the bay delta area in california? okay, not too many,which is surprising. but lots of tusslesabout endangered species,
environmental flows,salinity levels, ag north, ag south -- major, majorwater issues in california. and we have seen that andbeen as flexible as we can, but you know, species andhabitat and salinity of water levels are alsoreally important, and that's part of our job. we also are partneringwith states, with local governments,with nonprofits, and with the private sector.
states, as youall probably know, have a major role toplay -- the major role, really -- in the allocationof water within their states. but rivers run acrossmultiple states. colorado river, seven basinstates -- and you see this throughout the country. and actually weshare it of course, with the countryof mexico as well. so, i come fromthe private sector.
most of my career, with theexception of the last two and three-quarter years,have been in the private sector. and i know thatprivate sector, when faced with a challenge,can be pretty innovative in coming up with solutions. and so today, i'm announcingthe formation of the natural resource investment center. it will be based in thedepartment of interior, but it will be workingacross the federal family --
very consistent with thepresident's efforts to reach out and engage with theprivate sector in innovative solutions. our goal is to provideresources and information to many partners involved inwater resources across the country, and to bringprivate sector, nonprofits, academic institutions,states and other stakeholders to the table. so, how's it going to work?
first, we want to promoteinnovative financing instruments that willfund critical water infrastructure, and canhelp stretch limited water supplies. and i'll give youa few examples, but when mike's up here onthe panel you can drill in a little bit more. at the same time, we wantto think creatively as companies, private sector,wants to develop our
resources, we want to bethoughtful about how we mitigate that development. it used to be kindof site-by-site. we're now pulling up andlooking at a landscape scale, so the concept ofmitigation banks -- i'm going to develop over here,it's going to have an impact -- but the most importantarea to address conservation objectives may notbe right there. it may be someplace else,and how do we facilitate that?
so there's kind of athree-part mission to this natural resourcesinvestment center. first is to increase waterexchanges and transfers. so one example i would giveyou that's been around for many years, and this hasevolved over a great length of time, is the centralvalley project in california. those who havesenior water rights, those junior water rights,those with no water rights, have a method through thecentral valley project of
swapping and trading, andpaying, and fallowing crops, and investing in differentareas in order to thoughtfully manage thoselimited water supplies. so that's one example. second area we want towork on is increasing so i'm going to use justa quick example there, and that is the warrenbrock reservoir, which is just north ofthe border in california. we realize with the waywater is coming -- not
consistent with howit has in the past, as dr. holdren talked about-- we want to make sure that we have the kind of storagecapacity to handle that. so, not having a robustbudget like we might have had in the last century forinfrastructure projects, the bureau of reclamationpartnered with the states of california, nevada, arizona,and other stakeholders to permit and build within atwo-year period of time, water reservoir storage incalifornia that would make
sure that when we didhave high flow events, we had an opportunity tocapture that water from the colorado river system. third example, and this getsto the concept of mitigation banking, i'm going to usebarrick gold in nevada. barrick gold is a largegold-mining company. they want to be ableto expand their mines. they actually own a fairamount of private rangeland, and they have madeinvestments to enhance the
habitat on that rangeland tobank credits that will then be used to offset the impactfrom their gold mining, which we won't be in thesame immediate area -- in a different area. and we just worked with thestate of nevada to do some pilot work on privateinvestment supporting habitat on public land,because 87 percent of nevada actually is in publicownership by the federal government, so while thebarrick example is private,
we will work with thestate, because we won't have sufficient resources tomanage these landscapes in the way we would like. but with private-sectorinvestment, we have a bettershot at doing that. so three areas of focus:water exchanges and transfers, waterinfrastructure, and mitigation banking. so i know deputy secretaryconnor will get into a
little more detail on thoseas you get into more q&a, but in our regularday-to-day work, we also are providinggrants through the bureau of reclamation, and a lot oftimes those are matched locally. watersmart promotes waterconservation and efficiency, and we've just recentlyannounced $21 million in funding available in2016, to improve drought resilience acrossthe country. i guess that's assumingwe have a budget, mike,
in 2016. we also are investing inadvanced water treatment and desalination researchand development. you know, as dr.holdren talked about, we use an awful lot of water-- i mean, one could say, waste an awful lot of waterin this country relative to other countries. so being smart about howwe use it to begin with is helpful.
reuse, recycling, someinnovative things that happen, particularly incalifornia on this -- we want to see more of that. and desalinationis a potential, but very energy-intensive,and you have to make sure that that syncs up with ourclimate change objectives as well. so we need to do research,and that will make a difference. and last, on themeasurement side,
the usgs and the bureauof reclamation will be releasing aninteractive web tool. it will be coming outlater on this week. if you go tousgs.gov, doi.gov, or the bureau of reclamationwebsite, it will be live. and what that's going to dois take a lot of our open water data sourcing tovisualize the 16-year drought in thecolorado river basins. so you'll see watermanagers' and users'
real-time data, so that youcan make better-informed decisions about waterstorage, release, and so on. we're believers in opendata and sharing that data widely, and we know thatthe private sector and other stakeholders can makeexcellent use of that, and take it tothe next level. so i want to thank allof you for being here, for your commitment towater all over the country. we know the federalgovernment doesn't have
all the answers. we don't even pretend to. but we want to be effective,efficient partners with you, and we want to stretch everydollar you have with every dollar we have tomaximum benefit. and i think it's goingto take some bold action, and it's going to takesome collaboration, because we don't have enoughwater in the places that we need it most.
and i think it's fair tosay that when it begins to impact the economies --and we do see that in some communities -- itwakes everybody up. so we look forward to aproductive discussion over the course of the day, and ithank you all very much for being here, and look forwardto continuing to work with you. thanks.
