Roles of Energy and Food Elements in Water Security and Sustainability

In light of the adoption of Sustainable Development Goals suggested by the United Nations in 2016, the “nexus” approaches have emerged as powerful concepts to address the interdependencies of resources and even be supportive of policy-making systems. Particularly, the security and sustainability of water, energy and food supply are becoming one of the most challenging and important research. Flows of water, energy and food are intrinsically entwined and interlinked. In the US, most water withdrawals are attributed to irrigation and power generation, while a large quantity of water consumption is used as cooling water in thermal electric power plants. The above interdependencies will be strained by increasing concerns over water scarcity and quality, especially in the face of extreme climate change and rapid population growth. Demands on primary energy and food are estimated to increase by 40% and 50%, respectively, by 2030. In other words, water security and sustainable will be a critical issue globally in the coming decade.

This Special Issue collects original research and critical reviews about scientific and technical information on the recent advances in the roles of energy and food elements for achieving water security and sustainability. The primary areas of interest of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

• Allocation of water resources in (bio-)energy and food production
• Non-traditional water supply for agriculture and (bio-)energy sectors
• Energy-efficient separation and/or degradation processes for water reclamation, including desalination, wastewater treatment and underground water remediation
• advance in sustainable agriculture and deployment of precision agriculture practices to reduce water usage
• Energy and resource (e.g., nutrient) recovery from concentrated brine
• Wastewater, produced water, and fracked water
• Waste heat recovery or conversion from industrial water use
• Systems- and GIS-based modelling approaches to evaluating nexus sustainability
• Resilience and vulnerability at the urban nexus of food, water, energy and the environment.

Submission Deadline 

• 30 September 2019

Guest Editors

• Prof. Shih-Hsin Ho, School of Environment, Harbin Institute of Technology, China
• Dr. Yi-Hsueh (Brad) Chuang, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, CA, USA
• Dr. Andrew Z. Haddad, Energy Technologies Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA, USA
• Dr. Shu-Yuan Pan, Energy Technologies Area, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, CA, USA