Abstract
Five different water resource management scenarios are examined on eight dry islands of the Aegean Sea in Greece, pitting the current practice of water hauling via ship against alternative water supply schemes in delivering a sustainable solution for meeting water demand. The first scenario employs current water supply practices along with the operation of domestic rainwater harvesting systems. Desalinated water, provided through the operation of wind-powered desalination plants, is considered the main source of potable water in the rest of scenarios. Wind-powered desalination may be combined with rainwater harvesting as a supplementary source of water and/or seawater pumping and an additional source of energy that is supplied to the system. All different alternatives are evaluated for a 30-year lifespan, and an optimal solution is proposed for each island, based on a life cycle cost (LCC) analysis. The performance of this solution is then assessed under six climate change (CC) scenarios in terms of the rate of on-grid versus off-grid renewable energy that is required in order to achieve a certain reliability level. Overall, the examined scenarios show a decreasing performance in terms of reliability under CC for the eight islands.
Highlights
This paper focused on eight small islands of the Aegean Sea which face significant water scarcity problems; the presented methodological framework and findings are applicable to other arid or semi-arid insular or isolated coastal regions of the mainland
For the other scenarios, which include the operation of desalination plants, the capacity of the plants, the number of wind turbines and the volume of reservoir (m3 ) required in case of seawater pumping (SWP), are shown
As mentioned in the previous section, desalination capacity was designed for a 99.9% reliability level, while, regarding its energy supply, at least 80% was provided by renewable energy sources (RES)
Summary
According to the World Water Assessment Programme [1] global water demand has increased approximately by 1% per year from the 1980s and is expected to continue to rise with a similar rate until 2050, ending up in a 20%–30% increase above the current global water demand. This is due to many factors, such as population growth, changes in consumption patterns, increased water needs of municipal, agricultural and industrial sectors, and socio–economic and technological development [1,2]. According to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) No 6 [3], the availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation must be ensured for all people and for the future.
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