GEI launches national water-energy advisory services

SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — GEI Consultants, Inc. launched its national water-energy advisory services that will complement GEI’s well-established water resources consulting services. This new practice will focus on helping clients achieve the incremental resource, economic, and environmental benefits at the nexus between water and energy.

Services will include efficient development, treatment, use, and re-use of water and energy resources. Activities will encompass policies, regulations, programs, practices, and technologies that address all three dimensions of the water-energy nexus: reducing water sector impacts on energy, reducing energy sector impacts on water, and optimizing the nation’s water and energy resources and infrastructure on a fully integrated basis.

In addition to increasing water and energy efficiencies, GEI will assist water agencies and energy utilities in partnering on development of renewable and other energy resources. GEI will also help to accelerate adoption of new efficient technologies that benefit both the water and energy sectors. Further, GEI will bring water agencies and energy utilities together with their policymakers, regulators, customers, and stakeholders to develop collaborative approaches for optimizing water and energy on a combined basis.

Laurie Park, leader of GEI’s water-energy advisory services, assisted the California Energy Commission (CEC) in developing and launching the state’s water-energy initiative. In addition, while program manager for Southern California Gas Company’s California Sustainability Alliance program, Laurie authored a study entitled “The Role of Recycled Water in Energy Efficiency and Greenhouse Gas Reduction” that proposed a methodology for computing energy embedded in water. This proposed methodology became the foundation for two comprehensive water-energy studies conducted by GEI for the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) in 2009-2010. Laurie co-led those studies with GEI’s Bill Bennett.