As the winter rain continues to wash over Aotearoa New Zealand, much greater use of water metering is needed to start to address the woeful state of water resilience in this country, says the Kiwi co-founder of Watersmart, an innovative company that helps Kiwis to realise the true value of water.
Andrew Olsen, who co-founded Watersmart with his son in 2017, says that as the twin climate challenges of floods and droughts become more common, we need to act now to build our water resilience as a nation. This involves two initial steps, he says:
- Metering is the first step to water resilience, savings and reducing emissions
Olsen says that the first step towards resilience involves measuring water use. “The evidence is clear. Water metering builds understanding and resilience, and results in immediate savings, which offset the cost of installing the meters themselves. When Auckland started introducing water meters in 1999, 25% of water was saved from that day on. Then, when charging for water began, another 25% was saved.”
He points to a recent Water New Zealand article using data by BRANZ that it says shows that ‘one of main advantages offered by water metering is that it helps reduce water usage and identify leaks. A recent BRANZ project examining water usage in Kiwi homes, found median water use in non-metered households in the study (551 litres) was 72 percent higher than in metered households (319 litres).’
The evidence is also the same elsewhere around the globe. In the UK, Waterwise – the leading independent voice in the UK for using water wisely – has calculated that fitting just one million smart water meters in the UK each year for the next 15 years could save at least one billion litres of water daily – daily – by the mid-2030s, and reduce the UK’s current greenhouse gas emissions by 0.5% (2.1MtCO2e).
“And yet,” says Olsen, “not all major metropolitan council organization’s around New Zealand require metering.”
- A property-by-property approach builds greater resilience
Secondly, although recent Stats NZ data shows that $5.2 billion of residential building work is underway right now in New Zealand, far too few of these projects are required to incorporate features to retain, detain – and protect from – water.
“We’re finding that many cities around the world have realised that decentralisation – focusing at a site-by-site level to reduce water use rather than on a city-wide basis, is a quick and effective solution”, says Olsen.
“If you can harvest rainwater from your property, you can nearly halve your on-site water bill. This has been proven at Hobsonville Point, where water bills are heavily reduced compared to the rest of Auckland. That’s based on the compulsory installation of either a 1,000 litre or a 3,000 litre rainwater harvesting tank in every home, feeding non-potable water to toilets, laundry and outside taps, according to Watercare data.
“This also halves the amount of potable generation requirements on the part of Watercare. So if this is required for the development of every new dwelling, and people with older homes are incentivised to retrofit them, we could offset much of the capital outlay on assets, and make every home more resilient. As you can see by the huge demand for water tanks last summer in Wellington, saving rainwater makes a big difference.”
For this reason Watersmart applauds PMG Funds, who are looking at a series of sites to water meter ,to measure and improve their water efficiency, including identifying potential sites to rainwater harvest. With NZGBC ‘s (New Zealand Green Building Councils) planned implementation of NABERS Water for offices, PMG will look to implement the NABBERS Water process to their buildings. Furthermore, the banking sector are communicating Green Finance to high performing buildings using mechanisms like NABERS Ratings & Water Metering.
