Water to be the next commoditised resource

…As the world’s population soars, economic growth and the resulting demand for energy have led to a growing consensus that the days of unfettered and unregulated extraction and usage rights will come to an end.

Neil Eckert, chief executive of Climate Exchange, the carbon trading system, believes a cap-and-trade system like the one Europe has established to regulate CO2 emissions could be a solution. “If there is not enough of something, you ration it. Once you ration it, you create a secondary market, and it starts to be traded,” he said.


As head of the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer, Mr Engel has an interest in water being assigned a price. Wind generation requires just five litres of water to generate five megawatts, the average amount of energy consumed by a household per year. Coal requires 10,000 litres, while nuclear needs 12,500, to produce the same amount of power.

Independent