Trade-offs and synergies between water and energy use in rural Australia

Abstract

Increased efficiency in terms of water use and productivity, and the security of long-term water supplies under climate change, are key foci of the Australian Government’s Water for the Future program. A major component of this initiative is the $5.8 billion Sustainable Rural Water Use and Infrastructure program aimed at supporting the upgrading of irrigation infrastructure. However, it is likely that on-farm infrastructure investment will increase energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, suggesting potential conflicts in terms of mitigation and adaptation policies. This chapter reports on an integrated framework, based on carbon and water accounting and economic modelling, developed to analyse trade-offs between water savings, GHG emissions, and economic costs and benefits associated with irrigation technological change. The framework is applied to five national-scale crop-level irrigation transformation scenarios and five farm-level case studies, to enable exploration of the impact of technological change on the climate-energy-water nexus in this important sector.