Australia's businesses face higher water prices and pressure to increase water recycling, says the latest report from CEDA.
The report - Water That Works: Sustainable water management in the commercial sector - will be launched on Monday 19 February in Sydney by the Minister for the Environment and Water Resources, Malcolm Turnbull. It contains eleven papers explaining issues, trends and best practices for water management in the commercial sector, including 12 case studies of best practice in commercial water management.
CEDA acting chief executive Greg Meek says water needs to be priced to reflect its scarcity, and business users will need to accept appropriate price increases. He says the commercial sector's* progress in saving water is setting an example for the rest of the country.
"The commercial sector is showing how much water can be saved through more efficient and sustainable management," says Mr Meek. "For instance, the report finds that water use by Sydney industry decreased by about 56 per cent between 1991 and 2005, despite an increase in the total number of industrial properties in Sydney."
The report finds that commercial water demand has been controlled through initiatives such as water conservation programs, pricing reform, user education and more efficient technology, and all of these are expected to continue.
Regulators are expected to push prices up and encourage - and even insist upon - more use of recycled water over the years ahead, the report says.
But water is not a major cost factor for most businesses in the commercial sector, so the impact of pricing reforms on business performance will be modest.
The report accepts estimates that better water management practices could actually boost economic growth by almost one per cent of GDP - $6.8 billion.
The report also endorses a key conclusion of Professor John Quiggin's special water report in CEDA's 2007 Economic and Political Overview - that more water trading between urban and rural users is needed to ensure secure water supply for most Australian cities. With the possible exception of Sydney, it says, virtually every capital city and the other larger urban water businesses will be able to pay competitive prices for water and to find willing sellers in the irrigation sector. Such trading will enhance the security of urban supplies and reduce water restrictions.
Mr Meek notes that governments have still not implemented many of the reforms recommended three years ago in CEDA's major public policy report Water in the Australian Economy. "The Australian community needs to keep the pressure on governments - federal and state - to manage our water better," he says. "Both federal and state governments have begun to do more. They need to keep lifting their game."
Monday's launch of Water That Works is the first of several events CEDA will stage this year on business water use in combination with its national water partner and Water That Works report sponsor Serco, an international company that specialises in delivering public services in fields such as transport, hospitals, science, law enforcement and defence.
* Note on definitions: For the purposes of the report, the commercial sector is defined as including of the manufacturing sector, water industries and "other industry and services", but not including the agriculture, mining and power sectors. Some figures are for 2000-2001, as the ABS conducted its last comprehensive audit of Australia's water use in that year.
For further information please contact:
John Harris
Corporate Relations Director
Phone 03 9652 8415
Email info@ceda.com.au
Printed from the CEDA Web site at http://ceda.com.au. Copyright 1999-2009 CEDA