Water Supply
- Most countries in Africa, Asia and Australasia are suffering from severe water supply shortages, energy shortages, and prohibitive fossil energy prices
- Other regions suffer from clean water shortage: South America, Spain, Greece
- Governments are under pressure to supply continuous, sufficient and healthy drinking water to their populations.
- Many projects aim to overcome water supply shortage, but they rely on fuel or electricity and are thus too costly and damaging to the environment, with a high degree of CO2 rejection.
- These regions benefit from a very high amount of solar radiation year round.
- In most extremely hot and water-deficient regions, two-thirds of the population has no direct access to healthy drinking water, and demand is doubling every year.
- Governments, local communities, NGO's and industrialists are struggling to find local solutions as the situation worsens; e.g. India will require ~650,000 m3 of additional drinkable water capacity by 2015.
- SwissINSO offers an energy- and cost-effective solution that provides autonomous solar-powered water purification/desalination and bottling units housed in mobile containers.
- These units combine exclusive low energy purification technology with high efficiency photovoltaic solar panels to achieve the first truly green solution to drinking water shortage.
- Each unit is capable of converting 100,000 liters per day of seawater, brackish water or spoilt surface water into high-quality drinking water
Key Water and Sanitation Statistics
UN Factsheet On Water And Sanitation
- The world's population, 6.2 billion people in 2002, is expected to increase to approximately 7.2 billion people by 2015. Almost 95 per cent of the increase is expected to be in developing regions (WHO/UNICEF, 2005 : 40).
- Only one per cent of the total water resources on earth is available for human use. While 70 per cent of the world's surface is covered by water, 97.5 per cent of that is salt water. Of the remaining 2.5 per cent that is freshwater, almost 68.7 per cent is frozen in ice caps and glaciers UN-WWAP, 2006 : Fig. 4.1).
- Water withdrawals for irrigation have increased by over 60 per cent since 1960. About 70 per cent of all available freshwater is used for irrigation in agriculture. Yet because of inefficient irrigation systems, particularly in developing countries, 60 per cent of this water is lost to evaporation or is returned to rivers and groundwater aquifers UN-WWAP, 2006 : 173).
- Water use increased six-fold during the 20th Century, more than twice the rate of population growth. While water consumption in industrialized countries runs as high as 380 litres/capita/day in the United States (USGS, 2004) and 129 litres/capita/day in Germany (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2000), in developing countries 20-30 litres/capita/day are considered enough to meet basic human needs.
- In parts of the United States, China and India , groundwater is being consumed faster than it is being replenished, and groundwater tables are steadily falling. Some rivers, such as the Colorado River in the western United States and the Yellow River in China, often run dry before they reach the sea.
- Freshwater ecosystems have been severely degraded: it is estimated that about half the world's wetlands have been lost, and more than 20 per cent of the world's 10,000 known freshwater species have become extinct, threatened or endangered ( UN-DESA: 10 ).
Company Snapshot
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