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Energy Benchmarking for Efficient, Lower Carbon Wastewater Treatment Operations in Australia

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Decarbonising the Built Environment

Abstract

Wastewater treatment operations are energy-intensive and often require operational and design optimisation to improve their energy efficiency. The application of an energy benchmarking approach presents opportunities for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) to reduce costs by enabling energy savings and energy recovery, whilst at the same time identifying operational issues for WWTP personnel to focus on to improve plant performance. Energy benchmarking broadly seeks to help the water sector identify and adopt best practice efficiency in the pursuit of better industry performance. This chapter provides an assessment of electricity-related greenhouse gas emissions from Australian wastewater treatment operations since energy benchmarking efforts began and a future outlook for best practice WWTP energy performance and benchmarking in the water sector.

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Acknowledgements

Participating water authorities are thanked for benchmarking data contributions and The Water Services Association of Australia is acknowledged for facilitating data access.

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Correspondence to Ilda Clos .

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Clos, I., Alvarez-Gaitan, J.P., Saint, C.P., Short, M.D. (2019). Energy Benchmarking for Efficient, Lower Carbon Wastewater Treatment Operations in Australia. In: Newton, P., Prasad, D., Sproul, A., White, S. (eds) Decarbonising the Built Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-7940-6_16

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