Credits: 3 hec (+2hec)

Grade: Fail/Pass

English name: The Water Energy Nexus

Swedish name: Vatten och energi – en stark koppling

Intended learning outcomes

The course provides the following knowledge/abilities:

• Describe how climate change, water, energy, food, and lifestyle are intimately interconnected.
• Describe how the energy industry, agriculture, and other industries depend on water.
• Explain that complex problems - global warming, climate change, water scarcity, droughts, floodings, food crises, energy limitations - cannot be solved by looking at one component at a time.
• Know the major energy sources for handling the urban water cycle.
• Calculate the water footprint from various energy related activities.

Teaching activities

The course will be presented in English. It will be initiated with a 3-day intensive workshop at and then participants spend the following weeks with individual studies. The course is continued with follow-up online meetings, individually and in group. The course length corresponds to 3 hec with a possibility of 2 extra credits.

Examination

The exam is a take-home exam after the first session (October 18-20). The student is expected to write a short report on a given specific topic. This will be presented and discussed during online meetings in November. Deadline for the report is November 30.

For interested students the course can be extended (corresponding to 2 extra hec) with a given topic area of special interest for the student. This will be discussed and defined during the course and can be a small project starting in November 2022. The result can be presented as a report or a seminar. In some cases, such a project may be extended into a conference or journal publication.

Prerequisites

This course is open for PhD students and for participants from the water sector.

Examiner

Prof. em. Gustaf Olsson, LTH

Instructor

Prof. em. Gustaf Olsson, LTH 

Literature

The book

G. Olsson: Water and Energy – threats and opportunities, 2^nd Ed., IWA Publishing 2015.

will serve as the basic course textbook. We will try to get a subsidized price for the book.

These books will be used as complementary material:

G. Olsson: Clean water using solar and wind. IWA Publishing 2018, available open access

G. Olsson: Water interactions – a systemic view. Why we need to comprehend the water-energy-food-economy-lifestyle connections. IWA Publishing 2002 (in press, published before the course). Available open access.

On top of the textbooks there will be ppt slides, reports, and papers presented and made available.