Innovative Ideas to Finance Resiliency in the Water Sector

Distributed, or decentralized, water systems have the potential to increase the resiliency and flexibility of freshwater supply networks by reducing the load on aging infrastructure, eliminating or postponing the need to replace, expand or build centralized systems, decreasing energy requirements for conveyance, and offering alternative solutions if centralized infrastructure fails. Despite these and other potential benefits, financing distributed systems remains a key barrier. To overcome this challenge, Stanford researchers have examined innovative financing models in the electricity sector, which started the transition nearly twenty years ago from a purely centralized system to a hybrid model that includes distributed energy such as wind and solar, to draw applicable lessons for the water sector.