Capabilities
ECAM (Energy Performance and Carbon Emissions Assessment and Monitoring) offers unique capabilities for assessing greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption at a system-wide level. Gain greater insights by identifying areas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, increase energy savings and improve overall efficiencies to reduce costs.
Greenhouse Gas Emissions Assessment
Use ECAM to assess the greenhouse gas emissions of water and wastewater utilities at a system-wide level. ECAM was developed to be consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories and peer-reviewed literature.
Energy Performance
Assessment
Use ECAM to evaluate where and how much energy is consumed across the stages from water supply over wastewater treatment to faecal sludge management. Identify opportunities to reduce energy consumption and save operational costs.
Identification of Opportunities to reduce CO2 Emissions
Use ECAM to develop scenarios or model reduction impacts of planned or implemented measures. ECAM can help identify potentials and opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, decrease energy consumption and save operational costs.
What are the Benefits:
ECAM is your first step towards a climate-smart and sustainable urban water management: Acting in an environment of uncertain change. Get to know the co-benefits of using ECAM and reducing greenhouse gas emissions at a local scale.
Based on IPCC
ECAM was developed to be consistent with the IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories and peer-reviewed literature.
Free and Open Source
ECAM can be freely used, copied or changed. Its source code is openly available on GitHub. We encourage people to improve or make suggestions how to improve the design of the software.
Security
ECAM is secure and trustworthy. No information is ever stored on servers. All data inserted and processed during the ECAM assessment are merely on your personal computer.
Training
The online training materials inlcude video tutorials, exercise books and presentations that will help you assess the greenhouse gas emissions within your water utility.
ECAM follows a tiered approach. It works with data that is accesible to utility managers and operators, and provides complementary basic assumptions.
Tier A - Initial Assessment:
The Initial Assessment (Tier A) provides a snapshot of the utility’s greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption using data readily available to utility managers and staff.
Tier A helps utilities understand their overall emissions and energy usage at a system-wide level (water supply, wastewater and faecal sludge management). It uses a number of assumptions that allows users to reduce the amount of input data.
Tier B - Detailed Assessment:
The Detailed Assessment (Tier B) provides a more advanced level of the greenhouse gas emissions assessment using utility specific data that are used.
Tier B looks at greenhouse gas emissions and energy usage at the individual stage levels of the urban water cycle (i.e. abstraction, treatment, distribution etc.), providing utilities with a more thorough assessment of their emissions. It helps utilities identify areas of improvement and evaluate solutions and scenarios for developing a feasible carbon reduction strategy in line with their current and future needs.
Getting started with ECAM:
1) Gather the needed information for assessing the carbon footpringt of the utility by using this Excel ECAM 2.2 Input Data Sheet.
2) General Information: Enter file name, assessment period, currency and if desired, make comments. The specified assessment period will affect the results that are stated per annum.
3) Configuration: Activate the systems and/or stages you want to assess. Select the country your utility is based in to set standard literature values. Different GWPs for CH₄ and N₂O can be selected by chosing the respective IPCC assessment report.
4) Population: Set the numbers for resident population and serviced population; for the wastewater system, the connected population to the sewerage and the population with on-site treatment. Estimations of wastewater loadings and corresponding emissions are based on specified populations.
5) Assessment: Carry out an initial or detailed assessment and get an overview of greenhouse gas emissions and energy consumption at a system-wide level.
6) GHG Summary: See the total emissions and how they are distributed across the systems and different stages. Understand what the sources of emissions are and what their relative contribution is with the graphs.
7) Energy Summary: View where and how much energy is consumed across systems and stages. If substages are assessed, their relative energy consumption can be seen.
8) Opportunities: Get an overview of the potentials and opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The potentials are based on the proceeding assessment.