Note by moderator: This post was originally a response to this thread: forum.susana.org/195-climate-change-and-...ell-latrine-distance ("Climate change impact on water well latrine distance")

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Dear Mughal,
Regarding your call for SuSanA to develop guidance manuals on impacts of climate change on sanitation and water supply facilities; I just want to inform you that SuSanA WG3 (Renewable energies and climate change) is leading a paper on linkages between sanitation and climate change. This aims at providing some general guidance on how sanitation can help address climate change. The initial drafting of this paper has been supported by the SuSanA Phase III project and by a group of students from the Cranfield University. Later this year I expect that the draft paper will be shared on the forum to receive comments and feedback from Forum members.

I can also recommend having a look at the factsheet from WG3 'Links between sanitation, climate change and renewable energies' that provides some useful orientation.

All the best,
Kim

Dear Kim,

That is nice and interesting. Could I know, when the final study would be ready; and how we can access it?

Regards,

F H Mughal

Dear Mughal,
According to the preliminary time plan, the draft discussion paper on linkages between sanitation and climate change will be shared with a broader audience at the end of August, in connection with Stockholm World Water Week 2017. Signing up as a member of WG3 is one way to be kept in the information loop!

Best regards,
Kim

Dear all,
Sorry for the silence in reporting back about the progress on this factsheet/discussion paper on linkages between sanitation and climate change, that I mentioned a couple of months ago. We have deviated somewhat from the original timeline. We are still working on a initial version, that we aim to have ready to share on the forum for feedback, linked to the COP in Bonn in November. Please see the presentation from the 24th SuSanA meeting in Stockholm, 26 Aug 2017, which provide a background to the paper and an overview of proposed content. See:
www.susana.org/files/Susana-meeting-August-26_EC.pdf
Of course we are happy to receive any comments on this first idea of structure of the paper. But we especially look forward to your feedback and potential contributions when we have the first draft of the paper in the beginning of November.

All the best,
Kim

This post goes together with Kim's post above from 20 September (scrol to Page 1 of the thread).

I just wanted to make you aware that there is also a video from the presentation that he had mentioned:

Willy Alarcon and Astrid Michels (GIZ:) Sanitation and Climate Change Discussion Paper

This link here will hopefully jump you to the right time in the video:

Video at the right time

Or go here and fast forward to 1:48:29



The powerpoint presentation that goes with the video is available here:
www.susana.org/en/events/susana-meetings...na-meeting-stockholm

Or direct link here:
www.susana.org/files/Susana-meeting-August-26_EC.pdf

Dear SuSanA WG3 members,

it has been a long and tough process but eventually we are happy to present the final draft of the new Working Group factsheet “Opportunities for sustainable sanitation in climate action” (attached). If you are able to review it, please send your comments by the latest 08th March 2019 to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Best regards,
Kim / Sören / Thorsten

Dear WG-members,

the SuSanA WG3 Background Paper "Opportunities for sustainable sanitation in climate action" (former: factsheet) which was presented at World Water Week 2019 is available for download in the library and attached to this message.

Thanks for your valuable inputs and best regards,
Kim / Thorsten / Sören

Hi Sören and co-authors,
Thanks for that. Your factsheet looks great.

Couple of small comments:

I am not sure if the hydropower option is really so significant that it warrants being in the executive summary. You wrote:

Hydropower generation
It is possible to install turbines along wastewater systems,
including in place of pressure breakers; for example, before or
after the treatment plant. This approach has been used in the
city of Quito, Ecuador, where the hilly topography ensures strong
flows (Armijos et al. 2015).

I wonder if this is an isolated case. Normally wastewater flows by gravity or it has to be pumped up. I can't imagine that there is usually much head to play with. Is there a publication that reviews this technical option rather than just giving one example in Ecuador?

That picture of Peter Morgan's corn cobs with and without urine must be in hundreds of publications by now.

And I don't think that "flickr" needs to be mentioned in the captions for the photos. Flickr is just the platform where we store the SuSanA-photos but they have no copyright. The copyright is solely with the author. I would make it like this:
Sewage treatment plant Zagreb by IVAN VRANIĆ HVRANIC / SuSanA secretariat

Finally I always wonder: how can we reach to outside of our WASH sector with this information? So my go-to place is Wikipedia. Therefore, I have now added some information about the link to climate change to the Wikipedia article on sanitation (this article gets about 1000 views per day).

Please see here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation#Climate_change

Climate change
Climate change can have negative impacts on existing sanitation services in several ways: damage and loss of services from floods and reduced carrying capacity of waters receiving wastewater.[48] Water and sanitation services contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce those emissions, the following can be done: Choice of wastewater treatment technologies, improved pumping efficiency, use of renewable sources of energy, and within-system generation of energy offer potential for reducing emissions.[48] Sustainable sanitation systems can lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by producing renewable energy in the form of biogas, hydropower, heat recovery or directly from excreta.[49] These options have additional mitigation potential.

(click on the link above to see the various hyperlinks within this paragraph)

I cited also a paper by Jamie Bartram from 2016.

Are there more key sentences that should be added (note we are speaking to lay persons with this article)?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Elisabeth,

concerning the question of wastewater and hydropower, our WaCCliM intern Adriana did some research and found several interesting papers and links. In general, it is not a very trendy topic but still there is some potential (and at least one best practice):

The recovery of hydro energy in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is a relatively new concept. The effluent flow rate and the head pressure are two essential parameters in designing a hydropower plant (Maktabifard et al., 2018). Several factors affect the flow rate in a WWTP and lead to seasonal rate variations, these should be considered to analyze the economic viability of installing a hydropower turbine.
One study to emerge on this topic is that from Power et al. (2014), in which the energy recovery using hydropower turbines at the outlets of over 100 WWTPs in Ireland and the UK was analyzed to test the potential for improvements in the sustainability of the wastewater sector. The Kaplan turbine was found to have the greatest potential power output but the pump-as-turbine had the lowest cost per kilowatt. The electricity pricing was found to have the major impact on the economic viability of hydropower energy recovery (Power et al. 2014).
Another example is as study conducted in a Korean WWTP by Chae and Kang (2013) with a low-head small hydro power plant at the discharge outfall which generated a very small amount of energy (a contribution of around 1% to the energy demand of WWTPs). Nevertheless, the authors indicate that the incorporation of a hydropower plants in WWTPs has the advantage that they can be operated all year round.
The project SternE in Vienna, Austria assessed the hydraulic energy recovery from effluent drops was undertaken at the WWTP. Since 2009, a turbine in the outlet channel has been in operation. Around 550 million liters of purified water flow through a channel to the outlet structure and is discharged into the Danube River, thereby passing a height difference of 1.7 meters and producing up to 1.3 million kWh of clean electricity annually. (Sterne, NN).
In the USA, the project “Hydropower from Wastewater” designed, prototyped, and evaluated a 15kW integrated turbine/generator system for application to capturing flow energy contained within the effluent stream at wastewater treatment plants. The prototype system was designed to deliver electric power to the utility grid when supplied with a flow of 12 million gallons per day (MGD) and a head of 12 feet (Nyserda, 2011).

Sources:
Maktabifard, M., Zaborowska, E. & Makinia, J. Rev Environ Sci Biotechnol (2018) 17: 655. doi.org/10.1007/s11157-018-9478-x
Chae KJ, Kang J (2013) Estimating the energy independence of a municipal wastewater treatment plant incorporating green energy resources. Energy Convers Manag 75:664–672. doi.org/10.1016/j.enconman.2013.08.028
Power C, McNabola A, Coughlan P (2014) Development of an evaluation method for hydropower energy recovery in wastewater treatment plants: case studies in Ireland and the UK. Sustain Energy Technol Assess 7:166–177. doi.org/10.1016/j.seta.2014.06.001
Sterne (NN). www.ebswien.at/en/wastewater/wastewater/...r-and-energy/sterne/ (visited on 2020)
Nyserida (2011). Hydropower from Wastewater Treatment Plants. New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. www.nyserda.ny.gov/-/media/Files/Publica...-from-Wastewater.pdf

Thanks, Soeren.
I still think the cases where there is much of a drop from the effluent pipe of a wastewater treatment plant to the receiving water body will be few and far between, so hydropower generation at that location will be rarely possible.
I say that because I used to design wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) when I used to work for Brisbane Water and Wessex Water a few decades ago... The aim was always to have just the hydraulic head needed to get the water from the inlet to the outlet of the WWTP but not more than needed. If you had more then you'd be wasting energy for pumping the wastewater up to the inlet works (wastewater arrives at the WWTP by gravity then is pumped up to the inlet works).

Anyhow, thanks for your clarification. It's interesting to think about these things.

Elisabeth