<p>This great article in Scientific American, <a href="http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-future-of-fuel" target="_blank">Energy vs. Water: Solving Both Crises Together</a>, explores the challenges between providing enough energy for our needs as well as being able to ensure a continued supply of clean, fresh water in the future. Unfortunately energy still takes a lot of water to produce, and clean water requires energy, and some areas around the country and the globe simply lack the resources.</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;">&nbsp;</p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: small;">Water and energy are the two most fundamental ingredients of modern civilization. Without water, people die. Without energy, we cannot grow food, run computers, or power homes, schools or offices. As the world's population grows in number and affluence, the demands for both resources are increasing faster than ever.</span></p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="padding-left: 30px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: small;">Woefully underappreciated, however, is the reality that each of these precious commodities might soon cripple our use of the other. We consume massive quantities of water to generate energy, and we consume massive quantities of energy to deliver clean water. Many people are concerned about the perils of peak oil-running out of cheap oil. A few are voicing concerns about peak water. But almost no one is addressing the tension between the two: water restrictions are hampering solutions for generating more energy, and energy problems, particularly rising prices, are curtailing efforts to supply more clean water.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

<p>Just because it's no longer storming doesn't mean any of us in Houston have even remotely recovered from Hurricane Ike, which made landfall September 13. I know many neighborhoods across the city continue to watch the mounds of debris and fallen trees and branches and demolished fences climb past their eyeballs. Fortunately it looks like Houston is <a title="Hurricane Debris to Power Houston (Earth2Tech)" href="http://earth2tech.com/2008/10/31/hurricane-debris-to-power-biomass-plant/" target="_blank">doing something smart about it</a>!</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: small;">Biofuels Power Corp. signed an agreement today to create a biomass plant that will use wood chips and debris from the ongoing Hurricane Ike cleanup to produce 4 megawatts of clean energy and then sequester the carbon emissions in a depleted oil field. </span></p> <p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></p> <p style="padding-left: 60px;"><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-size: small;">Under the terms of the agreement, six acres of land will be leased from DSMC of Humble, Texas, a waste wood storage facility operator which has been the primary collector of debris for the City of Houston's Hurricane Ike cleanup effort, and which will also supply the fodder for the plant.</span></p> <p>&nbsp;</p>