takeaways from our first nexus summit
By Dean Amhaus, President & CEO
The Water Council and Marquette University’s Sustainability Lab held our first-ever Nexus Sustainability Leaders Summit last week, and what a way to kick off a new event! Nearly 200 people gathered at the Harley-Davidson Museum to discuss pressing topics in water and energy, including climate resilience, meeting the needs for the energy transition, the role of artificial intelligence in water and energy, and sustainable finance.
This event built on our annual Water Leaders Summit and Marquette’s Sustainability 2.0 Conference. The launch of the Nexus Summit allowed us to reach new audiences, expand our topic pool and work with the talented Marquette team.
One of my strongest takeaways from the summit is that change is happening more quickly than ever. We began with an interview of Katie McGinty, chief sustainability officer at Johnson Controls. Our moderator, Charles Fishman, began the session by showing an article from 1997, when McGinty was working in the Clinton White House and arguing that addressing climate change doesn’t have to come at the expense of economic progress. She hasn’t always won that battle in the last 30 years, but the tide is definitely turning now.
“It’s no longer environment or business,” she said. “It’s ‘my business depends on the environment.'”
The topics discussed at the summit — including AI, nuclear energy and green banks — aren’t brand new, but they are generating much more enthusiasm and discussion than they were even a year or two ago.
Attendees were also able to get in on the discussion through our small-group roundtables, where we discussed challenges to water and energy innovation and potential solutions. Even here, AI has changed the game. We collected notes from each of the roundtables (more than 40 pages in all) and asked Balamurugan Balakreshnan, chief AI architect at Microsoft and a speaker at the summit, to use AI to create a summary of the discussions. Below is the result. I think you’ll find it highly interesting.
Everyone who attended the summit will receive a post-event survey soon, and we invite your honest feedback. (Feel free to contact us directly by email.) Stay tuned for details of next year’s event!
Barriers to Technology Adoption and Commercialization
General Barriers:
- Financial Risks and Incentives: High financial risks deter adoption, and subsidies can mitigate this, though incentives vary across public and private sectors.
- Localization and Scale: Technologies, particularly in the water sector, need to be adaptable to local conditions, creating challenges for scalability.
- Cultural Resistance: Many organizations lack an innovation-centric model, and risk aversion slows down adoption.
- Regulatory Hurdles: Regulatory fragmentation, lengthy permitting, and lack of clear innovation mandates in utility oversight create bottlenecks. Investment security is also essential.
- Measurement Challenges: Energy is easier to measure and personalize than water, which complicates water technology adoption.
- Public Awareness and Education: Limited public understanding of water and energy infrastructure reduces support for technological change.
Sector-Specific Barriers:
- Water Sector: Strong local regulation, limited private investment, and undervaluation hinder technology scaling.
- Energy Sector: More adaptable to market changes and regulation, easier to implement personalized solutions, and simpler to measure.
Role of Pilot Projects:
- Piloting Bodies: Create centralized bodies to test technologies without needing multiple replications.
- Innovation Hubs and Safe-to-Fail Environments: Encourage hubs for collaboration and create environments where failure is an acceptable part of innovation.
- Avoiding Fragmented Pilots: Set clear goals for pilot projects to avoid prolonged, disconnected testing phases.
Strategies to Overcome Barriers:
- Financial and Regulatory Reforms: Provide subsidies and scale-support mechanisms, streamline regulations, and adopt adaptive management for testing new technologies.
- Public-Private Partnerships: Share risks and resources through collaboration between sectors.
- Public Engagement: Enhance public understanding through education campaigns to build support for new technologies.
- Innovation Ecosystems: Support incubators and collaborative networks for technology development.
- Real-World Demonstration: Fund and set clear metrics for pilot projects, and align state and federal regulations to reduce permitting delays.
This approach aims to accelerate innovation while balancing safety, scalability, and public buy-in.
