My guess, and it's only that, is that something happened in NYC similar to London in the same time.

A lot of water consuming industries (like printing, or brewing) moved out of London, and I am guessing NYC as well. The shift to residential/commercial from industrial saved a lot of water.

I am sure you are way ahead of us on metering (most still on flat rate) and leak control (we lose 30% of Thames Water's flow to leaks). We still have Victorian iron sewers which leak like heck.

The latest drought (dryest 18 months in over 80 years) has scared the heck out of the authorities, and the plan is for a new £1bn reservoir near Oxford. Of course the NIMBYs will fight it.

Another factor is that post privatisation, our utility is anxious to shed responsibility for pipeage. So if you have a leak inside your property line, they will tell you it is your problem. Obviously if you don't have metred water, or you rent, you are not motivated to do anything about it!

There is no question in the long run better building codes (*if* they are enforced) will reduce per capita energy demand. Also a programme to retire old air conditioners and fridges. It's incredible how much more efficient a modern fridge or air con is than its 1975 equivalent (in the case of fridges, one quarter as much energy).

(note you have to be careful how this is structured. What you want is people to retire old appliances, *not* buy new ones and keep the old inefficient ones as well!).

California shows how much has been accomplished. Since 1980 electricity consumption per capita has risen by something like 60%, but in California not at all. (rough figures, I'd have to check the true ones).

You are gaining by the urban heat island effect in winter (as much as 5 degrees centigrade warmer than the surrounding countryside). However you are losing by air con in the summer, and the effect is self reinforcing (positive feedback loop - more heat, more people use air con, which increases the effect). A programme of simply painting your rooftops white would save significant amounts of energy at peak demand-- the Berkeley lab has tackled this and says the summer savings would far outweigh the losses in winter (because roofs are often covered in snow in winter, and in any case the sunlight is of shorter duration, far less direct, and not on every day).

Another powerful energy saving tool would be demand control. My parents (Ontario) have a tariff that allows the utility to turn off their air conditioner or water heater for 30 minute periods at peak times.

In the case of NYC this would have the effect of reducing the distribution load at peak times, and also shifting power consumption onto periods when more of it is being met by CO2 free nuclear, hydro and potentially renewable (as and when those sources are built).

Valuethinker has a valid point about the change in the mix of NYC econ. Those that have left were heavy users of water:

Breweries - some out of business, some left for greener pastures

Printing - entire areas of Manhattan (like LWS) were printer-based; now mostly offices or living lofts

Garment Center - not much left of the manufacturing, and marketing uses lots less water

Film/Graphics - (including film/TV, X-ray, stat-houses, signage, etc.) all these had large laboratories consuming lots of water - nearly all that usage is gone, replaced by electrons

Light Manufacturing - like Eagle Electric in LIC - all gone - all heavy water use

Face it, except for washing the numbers, the Financial folk use lots less than the industrial folk

Added to that is - as mentioned in post - the advent of meters - now that was a shock to many, and helped control water usage, not in the least because it incentivized many landlords to replace leaky items (co-ops and condos as well)

One other question, though: how about the changeover from greasy spoon joints to fast food emporia? The former washed dishes, the latter create trash.

I can see where you got your data from (NYCDEP) but there seems to be some fuzziness in their numbers. If you back-calculate the population from the total and per capita consumption, you get a population that varies from 7.1 million in the early 80's to 8.0 million today. NYC's annual drinking water reports indicate that DEP provides water to the 8 million folks in NYC as well as 1 million in Westchester, so really there are 9 million people using the water. It doesn't change the trend but it could reduce the per-capita consumption data. What I can't reconcile is the language in the drinking water report that says the average single-family household uses 100,000gal of water per year. This language appears in the drinking water reports going back to 1997. Maybe DEP is to lazy to recalculate it and change the text?

As for changing the way electricity is billed, I agree with your suggestions for reducing demand and consumption. I live in the burbs and would like to see electrical demand included in zoning. For example, X Watts per square foot of house, where X is a reasonably low amount. I think it would help for planning purposes by pre-establishing the maximum demand that new development would add to the grid. I don't have any data on typical household consumption, other than generalizations, but I'm assuming that a reasonable X factor could be determined. Although it could turn out that there's too much variability to determine what X should be

As for charging a sliding price for electric, I would think it through very carefully. The current system with the separate charge for demand component (at least for non-residential use) has its drawbacks, but it's also seems to be an effective way to maintain system reliability. Instead of or perhaps in conjunction with your sliding scale based on consumption, time-of-day pricing needs to be established.

Through the demand charge, we're paying for all the power plants already built and we'll continue to pay for them until they're retired. The trick is to reduce or eliminate the need for additional power plants that would increase the demand charge.

Hello Glenn,

NYC can save both electricity and water by going back to opening windows and/or using evaporative cooling when it gets hot. From this 12 page PDFlink:

http://www.sahra.arizona.edu/kt/media/files/Phoenix_12-7-2004/Woodard_Ga...
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In the desert Southwest, power plants evaporate water in cooling towers. The Palo Verde Nuclear Plant near Phoenix used 23.66 billion gallons of water in 2002 to generate 30.8 millionMWatt-hours, or 0.77 gallons per Kwatt-hour.
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I have no idea what NYC's gallons evaporated/KWHr rate would be, but retrofitting buildings with manual windows [like in the old days] will save much energy and water versus running sealed and pressurized climate controlled interior spaces.

Bob Shaw in Phx,Az Are Humans Smarter than Yeast?

In Switzerland, water consumption per capita has gone steadily down in the past 30 years, despite the growing adoption of ‘modern’ hygiene (showering at least once a day, using deodorant, washing hair every few days, shaving legs, wearing clean underwear everyday, or even more often, etc. etc.) and ‘modern’ cleanliness, for. ex. driving a shiny, clean car.

a) better infrastructure (those leaks, etc.) and more parsimonious industrial use as well as better irrigation procedures in agriculture. Recycling of water. Changes in industry, as mentioned above.

b) Households (the stats don’t do a good job between distinguishing between a and b, sorry), but here is the point: in homes, electricity and cleaning products (made from ‘fossil' and mineral products in part) have displaced water use. Vaccum cleaners, powerful cleaning products, ventilation systems, modern buildings, modern flooring and wall covering (oil..), new machines (waxers, no water..), washing machines for clothes (sparing in water but high on other energy), the giving up of washing dishes (plastic / wood throwaways or a machine that uses little water and very powerful cleansing materials), etc. have had a tremendous effect.

The reason? It is easier. Using basically mostly water to wash clothes, people, surfaces, walls, other, stone terraces, terra cotta floors (almost gone now), food, babies, (argh, those baby wipes - it all counts you know), plants (got your shine-a-plant bomb ready?), toilets, garbage cans, etc. also requires elbow grease, physical work.

Ex: Today, to clean my home, I use no water at all. (Except to swill the sink..) I use industrial products and machines. No water.

On water and electricity billing there are some extremely simple measures that IMO should be implemented immediately.

Where I live, both utility bills have a (fairly large, in the case of water) fixed component for service provision and a variable component based on metered consumption. The first thing we should do is eliminate the fixed component of the bill and cover those fixed operating costs for the utility through higher unit charges. Without changing revenue or the average bill, this would increase the incentive to reduce consumption.

Actually reducing energy consumption is much more challenging than reducing water consumption though I think. I could probably reduce my domestic water consumption by a factor of 10 if I really had to, but I can't imagine how I could reduce my energy use by 50% (although going without domestic hot water would help a lot).

It seems that there is a possibility that a large part of the claimed reduction in water use is due to displacement of use to other locations rather than a real overall reduction in use. It is possible that people are drinking less beer and using less printed material and other manufactured products that used to be produced in NYC, but any reduction in demand for those manufactured products in unrelated to those industries leaving NYC.

Before claims are made that water use has actually been reduced it is necessary to separate reduction in demand from displacement. I remain skeptical.

On the other hand, one of the major approaches to meeting reduced fossil fuel supplies has to be a systematic, mandated increase in the efficiency of infrastructure.

The problem with the advice to "open the windows" is that most manufactures of windows don't seem to understand how double hung windows are supposed to work. The top sash has to be lowered, and the bottom one raised, simultaneously. This allows the hot air to flow out the top of the room, creating a negative air pressure that draws cooler air in through the bottom part of the window. It is practically impossible to find windows now-a-days that are tall enough to accomplish this, and most of the ones we looked at for replacement windows didn't even operate at the top, or have screens for the top sash. People seem to think windows are supposed to operate solely by allowing the wind do blow in. Until somebody in the window industry remembers how they're supposed to work, they don't. Opening modern windows is useless. The hot air is still trapped in the top of the room, with no mechanism for air exchange to the outside. They're useless.

Another thought.

You can save water consumption by *plugging leaks*.

As much as 30% of the water in London disappears via leaks.

Now with electricity, any 'leak' is simply a case of someone stealing power, knowingly or unknowingly. So it is likely the loss is much smaller, and can be tracked much more easily.

So once again a harder thing to solve than a leaking water system.

(having done a little work in this area, it is amazing how many thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of dollars of utility bills go unpaid because the utility doesn't know the metre is there, the billpayer skips out, etc.).