 So I'd like to welcome everybody back to the second panel. We're going to go ahead and keep going this morning. Be sure to grab a cup of coffee if you haven't already and take your seat. My name is Catherine Bliss. I'm here at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in our Global Health Policy Center and also direct a project, the Global Water Futures Project. And it's my privilege to welcome you back to panel two in which we will be looking at integrated multi-sectoral solutions to bridging knowledge gaps around water management, research, education, and outreach. In our keynote this morning, we heard a lot about water pricing and markets and some thoughts about where the knowledge gaps are and why they are there. We talked a bit about agricultural subsidies, the water energy nexus. I particularly liked the coffee and donut nexus. And also the need for tailored solutions to local contexts. In our panel number one, we also focused on really looking at where those particular gaps are and if there are gaps or if it's really kind of a gap in communication. We looked again at the issue of needing to get local in order to understand where the knowledge gaps are around water scarcity. Pete Klopp talked about a perception gap and disclosure gaps as well. We discussed some important tools to both map and track water scarcity and risk. Looking also at the importance of ensuring better coordination between local and federal authorities both around research needs as well as management issues. And finally we talked in the Q&A as well about some of the ways in which assumptions about water quantity have shaped historic practices and legislation in the long run. So this panel is going to move from an identification of the knowledge gaps to an exploration of some of the solutions that a variety of different sectors are using in order to approach both closing those gaps and to improve education, research, and outreach around water management issues. We'll have representatives from the public universities, the research sector, the private sector and the non-governmental research sector as well. So I would like to introduce our three speakers for this morning. To my immediate left is Dr. Reagan Wascom who is professor of civil and environmental engineering at Colorado State University. Where he also directs the Colorado Water Institute and the Colorado State University Water Center. Second, so to Reagan's left is Kirsten Thorn who is senior advisor at Chevron where she focuses on energy, water, biodiversity and climate change as they relate to Chevron's global functions, global operations. And at the far end of the table is Paul Faith who is a senior fellow at CNA Corporation where he focuses on research and analysis related to water management, environment, and security. So I will ask our panelists to go in the order they're presented here at the table and then we'll have some time for discussion. All right, well thank you Catherine and good morning to all of you. She just asked me to cut my remarks way down and she saw that I had written them up on the plane last night. So I'm up here scribbling and cutting and there's a lot of things we can respond to. This has been a fun dialogue so far. I think the questions are great. I think we're heading in the right direction. My name is Reagan Wascom and my role here today as I understand it in this panel really is to represent a university perspective in this dialogue. And I think all of the panelists this morning face the same challenges in that it's very difficult to get our arms around all of the aspects of water. But then you throw in agriculture, energy, the environment, not to mention climate change. And the complexity really grows by orders of magnitude and certainly if that complexity isn't enough, the repetitive change and this has been mentioned how fast things are changing in this world under some pretty serious financial constraints. So we're grappling with I think some really tough questions here. In this particular panel we've been asked to discuss solutions for bridging knowledge gaps in water, particularly as these sectors overlap. I think what I'm gonna do probably is I'll leave the solutions to you all as we have the breakouts, you guys get to do that. I'll talk about some of the approaches that we have used in higher education to try to bring some of these things together. Hopefully to cede the discussions that we're gonna have as we break out. So disclaimer, my perspective really is colored by the fact that all of my degrees and all of my work has been in the land grant university. And that's the people's university that Lincoln set up in 1862, where we really are about practical problem solving. And so I've been working at the interface of agriculture and water for about 25 years out trying to solve problems from a research and outreach perspective. And I would submit that I'm not sure how things look to you in DC. I get a sense of that as I'm up here. But there really is a lot going on. There are many solutions being implemented. Things are not static that this world is changing very quickly. So regarding the university role, I think it's obvious to everybody here that our primary role is that of training the next generation of managers, scientists, lawyers, engineers. That's our job. But hopefully also to train these students to work at the intersection of food, water, work across these sectors to think critically, to think broadly, and to be lifeline long learners. And that's what it really takes to work across sectors. And I would submit to you that the problem of getting students to think across these sectors is just as difficult as getting agencies to do it. I mean, it's a vexing problem, but it's certainly one that we have to address. And the membership of the SWAC, if you look at that, makes it evidence that no one agency owns water, right? It crosses a lot of different agencies, a lot of subcommittees. And they have different missions and goals, but they pertain to water. And I think it's true to say the same is true of departments within academia. Water crosses a lot of departments. So in one sense, I think it's accurate to say that we integrate across these sectors of water, energy, food, environment, all the time when we're working on the ground in agriculture or in natural resources management, we have to do it. After all, these are systems, right? It's only really in the confines of government agencies or university departments that we have the luxury of stove piping our attention in the way that we handle things. And examples of systems behavior abound, you guys can, I'm sure, give examples as well. But in agriculture, what we're seeing right now with the increasing costs of diesel fuel and fossil fuel-based fertilizers, well, producers are adopting more reduced tillage, changing their fertilizer practices. That's improving water quality by reducing sediments and nutrients, but it may require some more pesticides to take care of those problems. So genetically engineered crops may confer herbicide tolerance, but then they may increase our use of pesticides again. They may increase genetic uniformity of crops and they may increase pesticide resistance in other pests that we're fighting. So it's not just a problem of unintended consequences really, but it's of policies and programs that focus on single outcomes, okay? So I guess another example that's been brought up once before is this issue of ethanol production. The proliferation of ethanol plants on the high plains in the center of the United States is great for corn producers. They're loving it. And it's good for meeting governmental biofuels goals, but it also encourages the depletion of soil and groundwater resources, hurts cattle feeding operations, and there's probably other places where it pokes out as well. And that's the difficulty with systems. And of course, our world is a very complex system where all of these topics and all of these jurisdictions overlap, they intersect, they create synergies, and they create conflicts, and we just have to deal with that. Our tendency is to try to simplify systems in very naive ways. And then of course, we're always being surprised when systems behavior shows up. Now, clearly the answer isn't to lump everything into one jurisdiction or one disciplinary approach. That doesn't work. We need interdisciplinary, we need multi, we need transdisciplinary approaches. But think about it, the best interdisciplinary teams that you've ever been on, if you've ever been on one of those that was good. What you find is a lot of really good disciplinarians, right? People who really know their subject matter, but they can reach across and they can integrate and they can work across disciplines. And so this need for well trained disciplinarians and specialists is probably the best argument for continuing the way that we're currently approaching higher education. I think, and Ed mentioned this, colleges and universities are keenly aware of the need to educate across disciplines and sectors. The question is how do we do it? And this morning I'm gonna offer a couple of examples of approaches we're using at Colorado State, hopefully to see today's dialogue. Before I do that though, I wanna propose that the current panel was really talking about water research gaps and information gaps and needs. And I guess I would propose that the most difficult problem facing us here today in this room is really not what are the water research priorities, okay? I think simplistically and broadly speaking, the research question always is how can our water management systems better adapt to fill in the bank, right? Climate change, drought, nutrient loading, invasive species, groundwater over development, emerging contaminants, we missed all of those. These priorities change. They tend to be local and the truth is these problems don't go away. They just keep popping up in different manifestations. And so what I would like to submit, we think about as we break out is that our publicly funded water research portfolio has a bias towards short term hypothesis driven projects. And this was brought up, I think, in Ed's statements as well as in some of the dialogue with the questions. And what I'm proposing is we really need a better balance of programs and projects that certainly include hypothesis driven short term look at research but we also need long term observatory networks. We need development of better decision support tools like was mentioned earlier. We need integrated projects that work at the community or the watershed level to solve problems, to really get something done. We need synthesis projects and translational science. I would say in some cases we need just pure outreach and this was talked about, projects that drive the knowledge that we have out into adaptation and then last also mentioned we need some good old public education projects. And so to me the actual topic, it'll change, our priorities will move and shift. But the way that we approach these topics I think is something that we need to think about. So a couple of examples that I wanna give with respect to research and discovery, one approach that we've implemented at Colorado State University is what we're calling superclusters. And for example right now at CSU we have a clean energy supercluster that emerged from a university wide competition. The criteria was it had to engage faculty and disciplines from all across the campus in order to foster innovation and discovery. So our clean energy supercluster brought together engineers and chemists and biologists and policy people. And in just the first couple of years it spun out, an algae based biofuels startup, thin film photovoltaic startup, a new commercial battery manufacturer, and so this idea of getting out of the silos, bringing folks together really has been a spur for creativity. We were also doing that with public-private partnerships in the city and Catherine just gave me the get off the stage notice and I'm only about a third of the way through what I wanted to tell you guys. So I'm not gonna get to give you all of my examples. We're also looking of course of how we integrate education across those disciplines and as I mentioned earlier. Departments and colleges, they have their place and role and part of the way that we're trying to address this issue of bringing the disciplines together through schools. And Peter mentioned he's from the School of Natural Resources or Environment, I forget which one it is, the Nickel School. But the idea is you bring departments together under schools and through seminars and integrative classes and joint projects. You start to get students who can think about things more broadly. We still need the disciplines, but we need that ability to, we need leaders who are transformed in that ability in order to meet a lot of these challenges. So obviously we're approaching these things, but it's slow and the question is really are we gonna do it quick enough? Are we moving fast enough to meet the needs that are before us? Skipping through a lot of other really important things I wanted to say. Catherine, what I think I'll do is jump right to the end of my remarks and my last page of notes here. And what I would say about water resources, I had the pleasure of working in water resources management in the West. And if you work in the water in the West, really what you're working in is this arena of conflict. And some of the conflict is about facts and the science, some of it. Some of the conflict is about self-interest, my project, my interest. I think the rest is really about competing values. So in the West, we're really no longer working to develop the water resource. I think what we're doing now is learning how to share a developed resource. So we've made that transition. And my point is that the human dimension of all of this should not be overlooked or trivialized when we think about where we go from here. Science and engineering carry us only so far. And we have to keep in mind the need to study and understand how humans, how organizations, how institutions can change and adopt new practices and approaches. If we really want to make headway in solving these problems. I think that once water becomes scarce in a watershed, the economic ability of agriculture to compete with urban sector, manufacturing sector, the energy sector in particular just isn't there. And eventually this becomes a socioeconomic issue for us that we're going to have to think about. So before I yield the floor to the other panelists, I want to make one more point. And that is some of you here in the room represent federal agencies that fund water research, education and outreach. And what I would submit to you all is the way that you write your request for proposals or applications, the way that you select your projects for funding and by the accountability for results that you require of your project teams. This is the way we're going to make a change on the ground. Research, application and impact as an afterthought really doesn't work very well. But if you all require it, if you require accountability, you might get it. If you don't, well, maybe you'll get lucky, but I doubt it. And I would assure you all that while university faculty may not like that, they may not like being driven to for impacts and accountability and logic models, we'll respond to what's required by our funders. So I think we're asking the right questions here today. After all, this has been mentioned, we're on a vector to have some 9 billion people on planet Earth to feed within the time span of just the next generation. And those same 9 billion, they want more energy and they want more water while 70% of our water is already committed to food production. So you add climate change and extreme hydrologic variability to this mix and the uncertainty begins to look a lot like vulnerability. So these are critical issues. I'm glad CSIS convened us. I'm looking forward to the rest of the discussion. Thank you very much. Overview of the ways in which some universities are beginning to try to integrate the education of the next generation of managers at the intersection of water management and agriculture. And now we'll hear from Kirsten Thorne about how Chevron is approaching this in its own operations globally. So thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to talk a little bit about what Chevron's doing. And globally, Chevron's thinking about water management. So as you know, we're a multinational company. We operate in over 100 countries. But we also have sort of a unique operating footprint in California, which is where we were founded. And David brought up a number of issues related to California water. It's something that the company has been, you know, whether we like it or not, really forced to manage at the front end. We have two refineries in California, one in Richmond, up in the Bay Area, and one in El Segundo. And as was alluded to earlier with electric power, refineries also consume a tremendous amount of water for processing and cooling. And so when Chevron looks at how it's going to continue to produce energy, it has to look at the synergy between the water and energy interface. And so over the years, what we have done is we've established what we think are pretty successful public-private partnerships. We think this is a real value that the private sector can bring to some of the solutions necessary to move this debate forward. So in Richmond, the refinery has partnered up with the Municipal Water District and is looking at building a actual municipal treatment facility on site. And what that's going to enable the refinery to do in the next year or so is basically use all reclaimed municipal wastewater to run its refining processes. So we will not have to use any fresh water in our processes in Richmond, which is pretty exceptional. I think we're actually the first industrial base that is using 100% reclaimed water in California. Our El Segundo refinery is, I think, somewhere between 60% to 70% reclaimed water and is also working with Municipal Water District on increasing the capacity. So these unique opportunities are something that politically, Chevron had to step up and take note of because of the operating environment of California. And now we're trying to take these best practices and move them to places like the Middle East, where politically, water is not something that's necessarily talked about for a variety of reasons, at least on the energy production side. They build big desal plants, and they call it a day. But we really know that that's not necessarily going to be sustainable for long-term production of energy in the Middle East. So another example that I think is important is the industry, at large, produces a lot of water. A lot of water comes up when the oil comes up out of the reservoir. And so looking for innovative solutions on what to do with that water is something that Chevron as well as a number of other large oil companies are looking for, because it's a lot of water. We produce more water than we produce oil at the end of the day. And so we've got to find a way that we can reuse through treatment and reuse that water. And one novel approach happened a few years ago down in the San Joaquin Valley. It's just outside of Bakersfield. We were able to partner with local farmers to actually get them to take the high-quality produced water and use it as irrigation for agricultural crops. Now, that has been an interesting point of discussion with lots of folks who say, is that really the best quality water to be used on agricultural issues? So it's brought up a number of sustainability questions. It's a solution that has worked. It's actually allowed the farmers to use this water in lieu of taking water from other sources. So it's freed up some additional allocation. But fundamentally, there are questions still to be had about how you can use that methodology-wide, long-term widespread across industry because not all produced water, as you well know, is of the same quality and some simply can't be reused. But it is an opportunity where it's fit for purpose and meets the regulatory requirements. So one thing that the oil industry in general has gotten very, very good at is integrated risk management. We operate in some very complex operating environments. They're challenging on a number of social, environmental, and just physical levels. And so it's really important that these robust risk management tools that integrate the water and energy intersection, as well as land use planning, that they get stronger, that they incorporate the tools that Pete talked about, things that WRI is doing, things that Jemi is doing, things that the World Business Council for Sustainable Development are developing. These are tools that allow you to look multi-dimensional. You look at the local level in terms of water risk management. You can look at the regional level and then World Business Council allows you to look at a much higher level to be able to evaluate. If I look at this series of water risk, energy risk, land use, ecosystem risk, kinds of questions, I can make a better educated analysis of where my footprint is gonna impact and then what I can do to potentially mitigate those impacts. And I think that's something that not just oil and gas, but industry at large, the beverage companies are also very, very good at this. It's something that is, there's a lot to deploy this kind of risk management system, but it needs to be done, it needs to be integrated. It needs to start to consider the value of ecosystem services in a much more robust way. We've heard that from the earlier panel. We still don't have a very reliable way to value those ecosystem services. And I think until we do that, number one, it's gonna be very difficult to value water. And if you can't value water, we obviously have seen the consequences of that. So the tools that are out there and the organizations that are working on this integrated ecosystem services valuation, I think we've got to continue to help fund and promote because I think that's a key element in any comprehensive risk management system. Another area I think the private sector can add some unique value is technology. Not necessarily Chevron, although we obviously drill and lay pipe pretty darn well, but there are a lot of companies in the private sector that do this for a living. ITT is one. I would encourage all of you, ITT is launching today a study that they did of 1,000 registered voters in the US looking at a litany of interests and risks around water and what consumers, their mindset and their willingness to pay to change the paradigm would be. And so that is available, I think, on ITT later this afternoon. They're over at the Atlantic launching that as we speak. But what it does do is it talks a little bit about the political paradigm and the fact is that it's gonna take more than political will to shift behavior, right? And one of the things that I have to say the energy companies are getting very good at is energy efficiency. We haven't heard a lot about water efficiency today and conservation and I think that there are a myriad ways to incentivize here in the United States people to use less water, to use water more efficiently. It can be through building codes, it can be through EPA's water sense programming, it can be through state municipal kinds of incentives. I think that that has to be part of the landscape. I also think that if we can link it, and I'm not sure how to do that, but if we can link it to the distribution of energy, there is an incentive for everyone, even people who are in water abundant areas to think about if they reduce their water consumption they can reduce their energy costs. Clearly you're gonna have decoupling issues and you're gonna have issues with electric utilities and the monopoly of the water utilities and you've gotta get through all those issues. But I think that coupling those together makes some sense in terms of local distribution of those resources and the incentives to change behavior which we know at the end of the day we're gonna need to drive. It's a little bit of a different paradigm when we move overseas and into the developing world because you have people struggling to simply get enough water every day to live. And so another area I think that the private sector has some value in is capacity building. We operate in places that a lot of other people don't have access to. I mean, very few people wanna operate in the Niger Delta for very, very good reasons, I fully appreciate. But there's an opportunity to use Chevrons and Shell's asset bases in the Delta to start to deliver service oriented approaches around health services, around water services, sanitation services, you can bring to bear those assets and resources that are already there that already have established themselves in these places. You partner with USAID, you partner with development agencies, you partner with the banks, and other private corporations for sure. And you can build a more robust system where the government can start to see that there's value in the resiliency of having systems created. It also, at this point in time, there's a perfect entree with adaptation because these systems must be strengthened regardless of what we decide to do about water policy where these communities are not gonna make it, right? So there's an entree here with adaptation and country adaptation planning where the private sector and the public sector and civil society can come together. And frankly, I think could come to terms on some very specific ways to help increase capacity and increase the resilience of these communities. And at the same time, provide water and health services, which are clearly a value add. I think, I just wanted to hit on the point that Reagan made in the industry. One, we have a gap just in general with enough resources, enough employee resources, right? Engineers coming into the industry. But I think what's really important is I think there's still a fundamental gap at universities where engineers are trained as engineers and they go through their academic programming in a very robust, but very streamlined way. And I think whether Colorado State or Duke has a new center that they're launching through the Fuqua School of Business to look at how to prepare the energy systems workforce of tomorrow to be able to appreciate and to better taking the context, the kinds of risks that we're gonna face in order to build out the energy system that you're gonna need in 20, 30, 40, 50 years. We all know that we're not gonna be dependent on fossil fuels for the rest of our lives. We know we're gonna make that shift into low carbon energy. It's gonna come over time and it's gonna be developed in a responsible manner, you hope. But we also have a track record of developing policies around corn ethanol that don't really serve, at least on their face, the purposes of carbon reduction and or appropriate resource management. And so we've got to get away for the next generation to appreciate the intricacies and the complexities of these systems so that they're better equipped to make sound policy determinations not that it doesn't necessarily answer the political question, which I know has some issues. And then the final question I would like to just leave you with, we have the energy agency here in the United States that is kind of the repository for energy-based data and work that they collect. We don't have something kind of on that same magnitude for water. Recognizing the USGS does a very good job for what its mandate is, but thinking about something that could potentially bridge the various agencies and provide a house and an information opportunity, knowledge management system basically for water data around what David was alluding to this morning, understanding tap water quality, understanding distribution of various water rights and appropriation of water rights, understanding aquifers and how they recharge and what levels and what time frames, that may be something that could help. It would be a political you'd hope and it would provide a nice baseline for us to be able to tap into all over the country as we try to do better water resource planning. So thank you. Kirsten, thank you very much. So we've heard a bit about the private sector's expertise in the area of water extraction and issues, technical innovation, distribution mechanisms and a view from the private sector of the role that universities can play in training the next generation, both of engineers and also policy makers. We will now turn to Paul Faith of CNA for a perspective from his organization. Thank you, Catherine. What I would like to do is briefly, as briefly as I can, cover three topics where I think cross-sectoral interestingly approaches on the part of the government in particular but others as well, could actually would tie in very well with water issues and would help us to solve some significant problems. The first I'd like to cover is water quality than energy and water and finally water and conflict overseas. The water quality I think as we all know, I'm going to skip the data aspects of this but we do have a significant water quality probably in the United States. We've gotten to the point where the Clean Water Act actually worked on dealing with point sources so agriculture is left as the major source but we need to in many areas still go much farther. The Chesapeake Bay for example is struggling with this issue right now to reduce nutrient loadings. And one of the things that we handle this is with the point source control and then non-point source subsidies, David talked to this problem earlier about this kind of this mix of ways of treating this problem that lead to an unknown cost, unknown values and even difficulty in terms of price discovery, in terms of what it actually costs to deal with this. So I think one of the gaps that we have is gaps in water data. We don't actually know the situation in water quality. We don't survey very often or very widely and so even for the regulatory effort and for the subsidies that we're spending, I think we don't really know what we're really buying. In fact, it's even difficult to track in the water quality aspects, what are the extent of the problem and what sort of are we buying in terms of reductions. So I think one of the things I'd like to talk about is the way that we actually handle this policy problem and a way that I think would draw in a lot of people both at the local level but also sort of the federal level is to look at market-based mechanism. I'd like to talk about two of these. The first is nutrient trading or water quality trading and the second is using market-based approaches for the farm programs. One of the things that we know with nutrient trading is that there are a variety of different costs and in any dealing with any kind of problem you're gonna see variety of costs in different actors. What nutrient trading can do at a very local level or even at the level of the Chesapeake Bay where it's being talked about now, sitting that cap and then the key thing is to allow different partners, different actors within the community who have the lowest cost to have that price discovery happen and let those with higher costs to buy those and then be able to use those to set them off. Well there have been some examples where this has been used and a lot of analysis on this that shows that compared to basically our approach right now that nutrient trading could actually deliver a lot of improvement in quality for relatively lower cost. The second aspect is whether we handle the farm programs is they're largely volunteering the conservation programs that who walks in the door first often gets the money and targeting is anathema in US policy. Everybody, every state has to get a share irregardless of the aspects that are being contributed. A farmer may be not contributing to water quality or other problems and may still get funding. So one of the things I think we need to do here is go to an economics called the monopsony which is basically one buyer and a lot of sellers. WRI a few years back when I was there I actually did a study looking at in the Cunnes Toga basin comparing the purchase using $500,000 at the lowest cost from a group of farmers until the money ran out and then compared that with analysis on a county next door where it was the traditional Equip program and what the analysis showed that for the same amount of money you could buy seven times the reduction in nutrients if you use a market-based approach. And what leads me to on this conclusion in thinking about the broader question is, Hypoxia was mentioned earlier, I think we actually have enough money around that if we actually spend it efficiently I think we actually get a lot more improvement in water quality. Energy security, Alan mentioned earlier that this is really our principle security issue in the United States. What we're looking for here in terms of how energy security is currently being defined most often is secure supplies at reasonable cost that are climate friendly. That has been in the last 10 years become really sort of the norm. What I think we need to add also is that respects water constraints. There's been very little analysis and very little discussion within the policy aspects of these things about the constraints that water may provide. The drought in Atlanta was mentioned a little bit ago by Pete and one of the things that happened there that almost happened I should say there were 24 nuclear power plants in the region that was under drought that were within a week of having to close down. 24 out of 102 nuclear power plants in the United States were that close to having a significant supply of energy having to be closed off. The issue, although it's thermal electric cooling a lot of areas of the water withdrawals are themselves important. And I think there's been examples here that are coming up how this is gonna bite. For example, I say just a year or so ago suggested that there's a 50-50 probability that by 2017 the Hoover Dam may not be able to produce electric power. I actually was out in San Francisco not long ago and I asked a member of the Bechtel family. The Bechtel company was one of those that actually built the dam and I thought they'd have a perspective on this. I said, do you believe this 50-50 number? And they said, no, we only think it's 30% that actually won't be able to draw water. And I was really kind of shocked by that because I would have thought they said that study's a bunch of BS but they actually agreed with it. And that's one of the issues here is that the water is gonna be a constraint. You look at alternatives like shale oil requires two to five barrels of water for a barrel of oil. It's also in the Colorado River Basin. Substance to ethanol in the president's budget, about $39 billion, $36 billion, excuse me, in ethanol subsidies for what is really the most water-intensive option for developing transportation fuels. Electric cars, a lot of talk about how we can use charging at night because that's when the electric capacity is not being fully used but really no conversation that I've seen at least about the amount of water that would still have to be used at night to provide electricity for things like the Nissan Leaf. When you look at carbon capture and storage, there's a 30% energy penalty. That's kind of the range, mid-range, what people talk about. That means that there probably is gonna be a 30% water penalty. And how are we gonna, the question is, how are we actually gonna do these things? And what I've seen is that, like I said, very little discussion on these things. One piece I saw that was from an energy committee hearing, they were talking about the hydrogen economy. And one of the comments was that water is basically an inexhaustible resource. And I just thought, you know, that just kind of typifies sort of where we are in trying to look at these issues. So I think we do need the aspect here, I would say, there's been a lot of these road map studies, but very few of them, even when you look through and look for water, they say water heating comes up a lot. But the discussion about water as a constraint really doesn't come up at all. And I think we really have to figure that out and do a broader water assessment. That's one of the things that we are doing. Last topic, how many, let me do it one more time. A few minutes, okay. There's a lot of talk often about water wars. And this was particularly a hot topic earlier in this decade in the late 1990s, that a lot of discussion about, you know, water is the next oil, those sort of things. When you look at the research though, what actually comes out is that water is not a cause, typically for war between countries, actually can more often be a cause for collaboration. But it can be a cause for internal conflict in places that are already have low capacity or are weak or even failed states. And this happens in a couple of ways. And the reason that this is a security issue is because these sort of failed states and you see Afghanistan as an example, Somalia, Yemen, all places with water problems. And those have become places that have been terrorists, havens for terrorists. And it's probably the reason why the U.S. is concerning this issue that this doesn't go very far down these ways and trying to look at how you can actually avoid state failure or weakness. Four ways in which water contributes to places, again, there are already issues of governmental ability. First through water degradation, looking at things like safe drinking water sanitation, just the general degradation of the resource and how it impacts the economy. Food insecurity, obviously in times of food insecurity, there can be a whole range of problems that come up that are challenges for countries. Storms and floods, Pakistan for example, not long ago, a huge issue. And finally, the issue of migration, which impacts and is caused by the other three. And all these can have an effect on the way that states can become weaker or even fail. The problem is particularly worrisome in Africa where there are 19 of the 25 weakest states in the world. Again, what we see in these things is when countries don't have the ability to respond, have low capacity, and the instance of this has been increasing since the 1960s, that the more often then there requires an international response or an often a defense or military response in times of crisis and that's an issue. The knowledge gap here, I think, is that we really don't know where or how to respond to these sort of challenges and all of these aspects would be made worse by climate change. And so partly as an adaptation response to climate, but just because they exist now and are already causing significant problems, I think we need to figure out for ourselves and with other international partners, what are they gonna be the responses to these sort of things? They're bad now and as they may continue to get worse. But I think particularly looking at development, diplomacy, and defense responses, and again, that's sort of a cross-sectoral look at things that we need to pull together and figure out as these problems continue to exist and get worse, what are we gonna do about them? And I'll, one minute, so I'll stop. So we've had a review of university contributions and efforts to promote integration across the variety of different sectors. A discussion about the ways in which Chevron and other private sector companies are thinking about ways to use their own expertise to work with partners in the United States and in countries where they have operations to better address the linkages across water, agriculture, energy, and the environment. And a discussion about the ways, particular focus on the issues of water and energy challenges and water and security and the ways in which again, some of these efforts around broader private public sector discussions on development, diplomacy, and some of the security issues can promote both dialogue and efforts to identify promising solutions in the long term. We have time for some questions and commentary from the audience. Let me ask you to wait for a microphone if one is available, okay? And just please state your name and affiliation and we look forward to your comments. So I think there was one question over here, please. Thank you. Craig Zemutov from the US Department of Energy. That will kind of give away my bias in terms of where my question will be going. The fact that we have a Nobel Laureate, Secretary Chu kind of in charge of our department will give you some sense of a promise that we hold out for technology in terms of addressing problems like energy water. So with regards to technology, let me go back to Mr. Watson, Dr. Waskin. Your comment I think was science and engineering can only take us so far. I found that kind of intriguing. Kirsten, you came back and kind of talked about how technology is taking us further than where we are today. So the question I would pose is what role does technology hold out for possible solution to this water issue and why are some people basically not addressing that issue this morning and others thankfully from Chevron here. Glad to see some focus on technology. But for those folks that think there is a promise for technology, how far can technology take us in terms of addressing the problem? Great question, thank you very much. So I think one way to look at this is there is not a water shortage on the planet, there's an energy shortage, right? We're a wash in water here, just got salt in it. And so how far can desal technology take us, for example? One of the things that's happening in the West is most of the water projects that are being built now tend to be off channel reservoirs and they're doing this for environmental reasons. So how do you get the water where you want it? You pump it. And so the energy footprint of water is really increasing as well. If we can move, so the main problem with water is distribution and quality. So if we solve the energy problems, we can solve the world's water problems. Regarding technology for desal and other ways to clean up water, I think there's a tremendous amount going on there. And I think technology is gonna take us a long ways and really do the work in smart membranes and other type of systems to clean water up is progressing, I think relatively fast, but it's still an energy problem in terms of the cost of that water. And then the other part of it is the disposal. So just like the produce water that was spoken of, the wastewater stream that comes off that, the brine, you've gotta do something with it. And so again, we need technologies for that. I think we're doing a better job at learning how to create brine than we are of learning how to deal with brine. So right now the tendency is to re-inject it in class two wells, right? And we wanna go to zero liquid discharge type of approaches. There's some work to be done there. And I actually think technology holds part of the solution. I mentioned the idea of genetically modified crops. There's tremendous work going on in Monsanto, and Shingenta and other places, really on a race to develop crops with higher water use efficiencies. And I'm less optimistic about that being a solution because we know that plants require a lot of water. 99% of the water that goes into a plant blows off into the atmosphere and goes back into the hydrologic cycle because of the way plants capture carbon. They also release water. And so I know USDA is working on this vigorously, Mike, and we're looking forward to what you all and what Shingenta and Monsanto come out of on that. But I think fundamentally food production is a really interesting question that Peter brought up because it takes a lot of water to grow food. And how we break that linkage, I think it's gonna be whoever does that, they get the next Nobel Prize. I cannot speak at all about the energy food relationship because we don't do food. But what I can say is that over the years, the efficiency of the energy system has gotten exponentially better. However, we also have the introduction of unconventionals that are water intensive. There's no doubt about it. Shale gas, shale oil, heavy oil, there's a lot of water that's needed to produce these fuels. And so even though we can do it almost approximately close to producing a barrel of light sweet crude, it's still a barrel of water per barrel of oil. That's pretty much the standard in the industry. And so that's still a sizable amount of water when you think about how many barrels of oil are produced every year. So there's no doubt that technology is getting us to a point where we're able to extract more energy at lower costs, theoretically. But that doesn't necessarily help us with the input. So the input of water and the energy needed to create energy is still something that we struggle with because at the end of the day, if we can get those input costs down, the bottom line is helped. And so we have, the industry is investing quite a bit in how to bring down the cost of the input and also the amount of the inputs into the system. And so we believe that if you can do that hand in hand, like we're doing it in Richmond, we're reducing the amount of water we're intaking and we're changing the type of water we're inputting. So that's lowering our treatment costs at the end of the day because of the closed cycle system that we've installed. That's gonna help drive down the price of energy at the end of the day. It also lowers our energy input. But it is a balance because the closed loop is energy, there's an energy footprint to that, which is different than if we had, say, once through cooling, right? And so these are trade-offs that I think are just now beginning to be understood. So while the technology I think, and I think speaking on behalf of the company, we believe the technology will get us there because we've seen technology get us to a place that we didn't even think existed 20 years ago in the ability to extract some of these resources, there is still a tremendous amount of work that has to be done on balancing the trade-offs and making those difficult choices. I mean, even solar power has a significant water footprint, depending on the technology. It's not a solution that is devoid of the water challenges and certainly the land use challenges. But you talk to people, GE, ITT, you talk to these people who develop these amazing capabilities to drill. So we can access the water, we can drill deeper, but that doesn't help us on the sustainability side. And so while I think the technology between providing the appropriate energy mix and the access to water over the long term is gonna be there for us, it doesn't help essentially solve the question of which is gonna be more important? How are you gonna balance those factors out? And that's a policy decision. It's not a technology decision. A couple of things there in your question. I think technology has brought us a long, long way. There's so many advancements in so many areas. Even with agriculture, there are technologies now that are being used that are reducing the amount of water used to produce the same amount of crop, et cetera. But I think we need not only innovation and technology, but innovation and policy. And the key thing that economists talk about is the theory of induced innovation, that you have to have a value, you have a reason for innovating something. And again, this goes back to the whole question of the value of water or even the price of water, that for something that's not valued, then there's no inducement to invent new technologies to actually manage that problem. So we look back to the acid rain program and a lot of people before that program was put in place were thinking, well, we're gonna need all these new scrubbers and all this very advanced technologies. The answer was put in place was actually to use low sulfur coal. It was a very, very simple solution. And there has been still a driver for further technology that has come about through that, but I think that's the aspect. And I think, so we need, there's a lot of policies that we have in this country and I would cite the Farm Conservation Program as one where, if you could just kind of get from reverse into neutral and you can do a lot and you don't have to know everything in order to figure that out. But I think the other thing with technology is giving an incentive to actually adopt what technology has actually been developed. Hi, I'm David, is this on? Yeah, I'm an economist. So I wanted to hammer this panel's answer, hammer it in as a good answer and more hammering, not against it, so to speak. But it was in respect to this technology will save us meme. I've heard many, many times people say, we just need more supply, we just need more supply, we just need more supply. And as an economist, I have this other hand, which is the demand side. And I wanted to bring up what the panel alluded to when they said trade offs, there's a cost and there's a benefit to each of these things. And what we wanna look at in terms of a water shortage is how much does it cost us to bring another unit of water on the supply side, which is desalination, for example, which is quoted around a dollar a cubic meter, for example, and how much does it cost us to reduce demand by a cubic meter? And it turns out that it might be more like three cents. One of my favorite examples is in Gaza, which is a very controversial place. And they talk about water shortages and they talk about a desal plant there, but most people don't know that 70% of the water in Gaza is used for agriculture, right? It's not used for drinking water. Someone earlier said, if we don't have water, we die. Well, that's true, but the amount of drinking water out there is a tiny, tiny, tiny amount of all of our water use. So I won't go further than that. And I wanted to actually talk about two things that Paul said that were very interesting. One is he said that the SO2 auctions was one of the good ways of solving the, at the lowest cost, the problem with SO2 pollution. And I don't know if you saw the recent news of the analysis, but the SO2 auctions died when the regulators changed the rules and the market collapsed, right? So when we talk about policy solutions being very important, they're not, they are the only thing sometimes. Without a policy in place, there was no SO2 auction. And when the policy changed, it collapsed. So this is something to pay attention to, and I think the panel is very right to emphasize, policies are a good tool to now start to think about compared to technology, technology, which we've known about since the Roman and the Greek times as far as water is concerned. So that was essentially my little bit of hammering. So, do I get to respond? You do? Thanks. So, David, the Colorado Water Institute, just did a study in Colorado where Doug Kenney, who you may know, looked at the cost of new water supply in Colorado, today's market. And we looked at, was it cost to build a per acre foot new on-channel reservoir to move that water from agriculture to city and then to implement water conservation? The surprising thing about it was, you would expect the cost of new development to be high on the order of $15,000 to $20,000 per acre foot of new developed water. Compare that to the cost of conserved water in Denver or Aurora or something, and that's about 5,000 bucks an acre foot is what he came up for. By the time you implement the programs and do the education, et cetera, but the cost of transferring water from ag to city, and maybe this doesn't surprise you, but it did me, is more on the order of $12,000 to $14,000. And the reason is that right now, the way we're set up, the transaction costs are very, very high to move that water. So I thought that was interesting. And it goes to your point about changing the demand function. We have time for one more question, if there is. Yes, sir? Yeah. Hi, my name is Sundarangacharyan from Monsanto. So far, I've not heard any discussion of about salinity and the encroachment of the deltas with more salt coming in and how that's gonna impact and maybe what role technology can play there. Tell you what someone else said about it. I just saw a presentation on this actually last week and my sense of the whole thing was that it's just a huge problem getting in solving it. One of the things that was the most shocking facts that I heard about was that the delta itself has subsided because the water's been taken away so the organic material has oxidized and the lowest point in the delta is now 15 feet below sea level. So if the levees, if something were to happen to the levees, they would all be flooded with seawater. So it's such a bad situation and there doesn't seem to be a very good answer for all this but the person concurred with what David said earlier that we've spent all this money, hundreds of millions on research, why don't we just get started in doing some things because again, they're political stalling, but they do have some solutions that could be put in place but they look like things that it's gotten to a point where it's almost insoluble. This seemed to me anyway. All right, well we've had a very interesting discussion of multiple sector approaches and efforts to coordinate on policy, technology, education and outreach around water management and its links to agriculture, energy and the environment. I want to bring this panel to a close. Let me ask you to join me in thanking our panelists. And I want to turn to Jim and I'm gonna say your name wrong and I'm sorry, Dobarowski. Dobarowski, please forgive me for that for some instructions regarding our working lunch. Thank you very much. My name's Jim Dobarowski. I'm from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture with USDA and I'm standing right here next to your luscious lunch in anticipation of what's coming next. We're going to be