Water demand management

Until relatively recently problems with water supply-demand balance were typically addressed through "supply augmentation", that is to say, building more dams, water treatment stations, etc. As long as water resources were considered abundant and the needs of the natural environment were ignored this reliance on the "engineering paradigm" made sense. Moreover, water utilities and governments have long preferred large capital projects to the less profitable and more difficult challenges of improving system efficiency (e.g. leakage reduction) and demand management. Water demand management came into vogue in the 1990s and 2000s at the same moment dams and similar supply augmentation schemes went out of fashion because they were increasingly seen as overly expensive, damaging to the environment (see Environmental impact of reservoirs), and socially unjust. Now, in the 2020s, it is accurate to say that demand management is the dominant approach in the richer countries of North America and Europe, but is also becoming more popular in less affluent countries and regions.

At its heart, demand management is about forecasting demand for good and services and planning how that demand will be met. In many applications demand management is also increasingly about reducing or moderating demand (e.g. water, energy, acute clinical health services, etc.). In energy demand management, for example, the offer of cheaper off-peak energy tariffs is a common method for shifting energy demand away from peak periods and towards periods when there is surplus energy available.

Water demand management depends on better understanding of exactly how much water different users are using for different purposes (the quantitative challenge) and on users' decision-making processes (the qualitative challenge). With these sorts of data it is possible to create policies, at utility scale (usually a city-region) or national scale (government), to promote reductions in user demand. If skilfully done, such policies can address supply-demand imbalances by reducing demand to available supply, though the risk of negative impacts on utilities, consumers and the environment are all too real. There are three basic approaches to water demand management policy and one key challenge, all of which are discussed below with reference to the key sectors where water demand management is practiced: domestic, agricultural and industrial.

All water utilities and most governments now pursue programmes of public education aimed at promoting reductions in water use. Such programmes have increasingly moved on-line, targeting consumers with tweets, Instagram posts and even Tik Toks enthusiastically promoting water conservation. This is a welcome change from previous approaches based on physical mailshots of enclosures with water bills as there is little evidence that these exercised much influence on water users' behaviours.

An under-recognised challenge with consumer education approaches to demand management is that they tend to assume that water users are always rational agents, collecting all relevant data and then producing purely rational decisions based on the data. Research into water users' behaviours shows that most decisions are more linked to habit, perception and social conventions than rationality, particularly in the domestic sphere. In agriculture and industry consumer education approaches are less common, as there is a greater reliance on water tariffs and direct state regulation of water abstraction and wastewater return.

In city-regions where supply constraints are more severe water utilities have occasionally adopted the approach of offering to replace water-consumptive fixtures and fittings with water-conservative ones. A good example is in south California where worries about running out of water led to a comprehensive programme of consumer education, leak detection, tariff reform and plumbing retrofits. Key to success has been the replacement of over two million high flush volume toilets with low flush volume alternatives. The authority has also supplied more than three million high efficiency showerheads and over two hundred thousand tap/faucet aerators (mixing air with water reduces flow rates whilst maintaining performance). These measures have saved over 66,000 acre-feet (conversion) of water per year, which can then be directed to improving supply-demand balance.

Many commentators argue that utilities often do not charge prices that encourage users to conserve water. Certainly domestic water tariffs are low in North America and Europe, and indeed in much of the rest of the world. But the drive to discipline user demand by ratcheting up water tariffs brings with it a series of problems. First, available research suggests that there is relatively little "price elasticity of demand" linked to domestic water consumption—estimates vary between about -0.1 and -0.4, meaning that the demand for water decreases by 0.1% to 0.4% for every 1% increase in tariffs. Second, attempts to achieve demand reduction by increasing price can create "water poverty" (usually defined as households spending more than 3-5% of household income on water services). Third, the data and data management required for even simple charging schemes (single volumetric charges) can cost more than the saved water cost to produce in the first place. More complex tariffs (e.g. rising block or seasonal tariffs) require even more expensive and complex data systems that are not yet widespread even in richer countries.

Assessing the efficacy of the above policies, singly or in combination, requires data that is expensive to acquire and complex to manage and process. Moreover, since water consumption is the product of a large number of interacting drivers, constraints and schemes, involving periodic social media or mail-shot communications to consumers promoting water conservation, require sufficiently frequent meter readings (e.g. daily, weekly or monthly) at household scale to be quite expensive to implement. All the more so in countries like the UK where domestic meter penetration is only 60 or 65%. Much enthusiasm has been generated around the prospects that so-called smart meters (meters combining measurement, data logging and communications) could greatly facilitate water demand management. To date results are not encouraging, mostly due to the relatively poor state of the required data infrastructure.