Thanks Elisabeth, much appreciated. As always you are an invaluable source of so much useful information. So far I've only taken in a little of the content of the links that you sent but it seems that most of this relates to urban greenhouse emissions of WASH services. This is highly relevant to our developments but these include largely the rural applications.

I hope it's okay to remind people about the opportunity of treating safe drinking water with granulated ceramics. This is gravity fed and could get safe drinking water to more of the vulnerable than is possible by any other means. The only notable greenhouse emission is in the production of the granulated media, though using environmentally responsible high firing kilns. The large-scale water filters will be highly sustainable, including not only remarkable effectiveness and user-friendliness, but importantly, affordability. As mentioned, several roadblocks to implementation include: 1. the stated lack of capacity to evaluate the large-scale water filters, and, 2. The lack of interest among entrepreneur investors while the stated intent is to make these systems affordable. I.e., the profit margin would be too small to attract entrepreneurs when it is low-income people who are doing production of the granulated water filter media.

Here again are two links to,

1. The *Ceramic Bulletin* article, *Filtering safe drinking water through granulated ceramics,* and, 
2. A schematic of a granulated media filter system of 2,000 beneficiaries. 

tamceramics.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/...ature_01-02-2019.pdf
drive.google.com/file/d/1WEuo6wj5RBk9qz3.../view?usp=share_link

Sorry that I'm a bit like a broken record in this reminder. One can only hope that by all that is good and true, a consensus will develop, such that these affordable interventions can be implemented.

All the best!
Reid
www.resiliencie.com

Hi Reid,
You can find answers to your questions in the publication mentioned by Rémi in this post:  forum.susana.org/195-climate-change-and-...-tool?start=12#34069

IWA also has a lot of resources here: climatesmartwater.org/carbon-neutrality/

From that page you can find this publication which is very good:  " Reducing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Water and Sanitation Services: Overview of emissions and their potential reduction illustrated by utility know-how "

I've been weaving this kind of information into the Wikipedia article on WASH, see here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASH#Climate_change_aspects
This should give you a good starting point.

Regards,
Elisabeth

Greeting All, about the energy performance and carbon emissions within the urban water cycle, could someone please enlighten me as to the problems areas?  Could someone enumerate the stages of the urban water cycle, at which there are problems, and what are these problems?  At what specific stages are there energy issues and carbon emissions? Thanks!  Reid

Dear Ranjin,

Thanks a lot for your reply which has clarified a lot of aspects about ECAM for me. And your search method is also really good - I'll look through those publications and see which ones are the most useful for my purposes.
Thanks very much!

Regards,
Elisabeth

Hi Elisabeth,
I will try to answer your questions, even though I wasn't involved so much lately and I might not have all the information.

The ECAM tool has received several updates in the past few years. Keep in mind that the goal of the ECAM tool is to quantify GHG emissions in the water and sanitation sector according to the IPCC guidelines and the last change in the guidelines was in 2019; ECAM was updated to be in compliance with those last IPCC refinements. So, it is still up to date.

I think currently there is no development ongoing, but if you go to the ECAM landing page you will see a link to ECAM's github page where you can leave requests for further development. The WaCCliM project that has financed the development in the past has ended, but ECAM is an open-source tool and the whole source code is available on github so anybody can take it and develop it further.

Yes, ECAM is still being used. For example, in Peru it has become quite institutionalized, at least for centralized water and sanitation. The IADB has also started to use it to assess several of their projects. If you are looking for experiences in applying ECAM for decentralized sanitation, then some colleagues from Zambia should be able to give you more information. GIZ and BORDA are applying it there.

Here you may find some publications: scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=...ater+emissions&btnG=

Hi,

I am wondering where we stand with the ECAM tool now? Is it still being used and updated? Are there any scientific publications where people show their results when using the ECAM tool?
I didn't find any recent publications like that here in the section "scientific literature": climatesmartwater.org/ecam/

I'm aware of another forum thread about the ECAM tool which talks about the FSM component:
forum.susana.org/195-climate-change-and-...ent-in-the-ecam-tool

I came back to this thread because I was adding some content about GHG emissions from sanitation to the Wikipedia article on WASH here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASH#Greenhouse_gas_emissions (and also in the Wikipedia article on greenhouse gas emissions here ).

The new GWP report " 2022 Edition of the Strategic Framework for WASH Climate Resilient Development" ( here ) also has a small section about GHG emissions but relies on previous publications Cheng et al. (2022) and Dickin et al. (2020) (see page 6).

Regards,
Elisabeth

Make sure to check out the new ECAM Exercise Books, available in English and Spanish

How to work with the ECAM Tool?

Find Video Tutorials here:

vimeo.com/album/5639500

The tool has been released and is available via www.wacclim.org/ecam .

You can see a short demonstration of it in the video below:

Dear all,

I am happy to announce that the test version of ECAM V.2.2 including faecal sludge management is now available.

We are currently peer-reviewing, testing and translating it before the tool will be officially launched. If you have any feedback or questions, they are very welcomed.

If anybody here is interested to participate in a more in-depth peer-review please send me an e-mail.

Regards,
Ranjin

I would like to point out that the ECAM tool has been developed to assess greenhouse gas emissions of centralized water and sanitation systems. It currently can estimate the GHG emissions from onsite sanitation but only in a generalized manner that does not differentiate between different technologies and practices.

It may be possible that in the future we can include also more options for decentralized sanitation systems. Therefore, any feedback from this community on how this should be done and especially any relevant studies that you can share on greenhouse gas emissions from fecal sludge management are welcomed.

The Energy Performance and Carbon Emissions Assessment and Monitoring (ECAM) tool enables water and wastewater utilities to measure their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy consumption at a system-wide level. From Abstraction, Treatment and Distribution to Collection, Treatment and Discharge. By identifying areas to reduce GHG emissions, increase energy savings and improve overall efficiencies to reduce costs, ECAM offers a holistic approach for urban water utilities to shift to low energy, low carbon water management. The water sector can make significant contributions to the Paris Agreement target of keeping global temperature rise to well below 2°, and the respective Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), although awareness of this opportunity is currently limited.

“The contribution of the water sector to GHG emissions is complex and therefore often under-recognised”, said Astrid Michels, Project Manager of the Water and Wastewater Companies for Climate Mitigation (WaCCliM) project that has developed the ECAM tool, “ECAM helps utilities develop an emissions baseline, identify areas of improvement to reduce indirect and direct emissions, and monitor progress over time.” ECAM is a free and open source tool that has been successfully piloted by utilities in Jordan, Mexico and Peru that participate in the WaCCliM project, to achieve dramatic reductions in GHG emissions. Operational and process optimization of the pilot plants have resulted in annual savings of more than 10,000 tons of CO2 equivalents:

Madaba, Jordan joined WaCCliM in 2016 and is using ECAM to assess its carbon footprint to unlock financing for low carbon water and wastewater infrastructure to help meet its GHG reduction potential. The Installation of energy-efficient pumps with variable-frequency drives has reduced energy consumption by 40%.

San Francisco del Rincón, Mexico, has achieved almost a 50% reduction of its total GHG emissions compared to the baseline established with ECAM in 2014. A Reduction of 2,500 tons of CO2 equivalents per year was achieved by increasing the number of connections to the wastewater treatment plant, resulting in a 40% reduction of GHG emissions.

Cusco, Peru, is saving 7,454 t CO2 emissions per year through optimized sewage sludge Treatment. This corresponds to about 3,100 flights Lima-Frankfurt-Lima per Person.

In addition to the pilots, utilities in over 20 cities have now used the ECAM tool to assess and drive GHG reductions. ECAM was recently endorsed by the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group as a means to empower cities around the world to measure the emissions of their urban water, identify and plan reduction measures, and shift to a low-carbon, resilient future.



_____________________________________________________________
Further Information

● ECAM is available under: www.wacclim.org/ecam
● Learn how to carry out an assessment through the ECAM Exercise Book. Available in English & Spanish
● Find further resources about ECAM and the WaCCliM Project under: www.wacclim.org


Notes to Editors
ECAM was developed by the International Water Association (IWA), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA). ECAM is a central component of the WaCCliM project, part of the International Climate Initiative. The German Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB) supports this initiative on the basis of a decision adopted by the German Bundestag.

The ECAM tool development was based on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories methodology. It provides the opportunity to develop scenarios and model reduction impacts of future measures, as well as to monitor GHG reduction results after their implementation. It can help utilities prepare for future reporting needs on climate mitigation. ECAM also assists in linking Monitoring, Reporting and Verification of mitigation actions in the water sector to national level.