Page - 4 - in Clean Water Using Solar and Wind - Outside the Power Grid

4 Clean Water Using Solar and Wind: Outside the Power Grid Already today the cost of “new” renewable energy can compete with traditional electrical generation. Clean water is a matter of life and death. Still, too many people lack this basic need. Lack of electric power for pumping and cleaning contaminated water is one of the missing prerequisites; one person out of seven has no electric power available. We wish to raise awareness of the fact that today there are great and realistic opportunities for those people living outside the electric power grid. 1.1 CLEAN WATER AND ENERGY FOR ALL The World Economic Forum (WEF) presented its tenth global risk report in 2015 (http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2015). For the first time water crises took the top spot among the risks in the report, published by 900 leaders in politics, business and civic life about the world’s most critical issues. In 2014 water had ranked third among the most serious threats to business and society. The risks for water crises in the 2015 report were deemed both highly likely and highly devastating. The top ranking of water reflects the growing recognition among world leaders that diminishing supplies of reliable, clean water will be a real threat to health and wealth for the poor, for the richest economies and for the largest cities. It is also notable that the WEF report reclassified water from an environmental risk to a societal risk. It has been recognised also by world leaders that nearly all human activity – food production, fishing, public health, industrial activities and power production – has water at its base. Renewable energy technologies can make a major contribution to universal access to both energy and water in a sustainable way. In many regions with energy poverty there are abundant renewable energy sources. There is no lack of sunshine in sub-Saharan Africa or South Asia. In most regions of Africa there are more than 300 days of bright sunlight per year (Varadi et  al., 2018). Dry areas like One person out of seven has no electric power. Downloaded from https://iwaponline.com/ebooks/book-pdf/520710/wio9781780409443.pdf by IWA Publishing user