Impact of Inter‐Utility Agreements on Cooperative Regional Water Infrastructure Investment and Management Pathways
Impact of Inter‐Utility Agreements on Cooperative Regional Water Infrastructure Investment and Management Pathways
复制标题
公用事业公司间协议对区域水基础设施合作投资和管理途径的影响
DOI：
10.1029/2021wr030700
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发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
5.4
通讯作者：
G. Characklis
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
David E. Gorelick;D. Gold;P. Reed;G. Characklis
面对不断增长的需求和有限的供水扩张选择，城市水务公司越来越多地与邻近的公用事业公司合作开发和运营共享基础设施。公用事业间协议可以通过规模经济降低成本，并有助于限制对环境的影响，作为大型资本项目独立投资的替代品。然而，需求增长或水资源供应的意外变化，偏离了支持合作协议的预测，可能会给公用事业合作伙伴带来供应和财务风险。合作伙伴之间需求的不对称增长或协议结构本身在适应不断变化的供需条件方面缺乏灵活性，也可能加剧风险。本研究探讨了固定和可调容量公用事业间合作协议的可行性，以减轻规模、增长预期和独立基础设施扩建选择不同的公用事业的区域供水和财务风险。研究发现，尽管邻近供水系统之间的天气和气候高度相关（例如，同时发生干旱事件），但建立共享区域水处理厂的正式协议显著提高了区域供水的可靠性和财务结果。然而，地区绩效的改善掩盖了个别协议伙伴之间的权衡。可调整的处理能力分配增加了公用事业公司间协议的灵活性，但由于其他合作伙伴的决策，可能会增加每个公用事业公司的财务风险。与分配给每个合作伙伴固定能力的协议相比，在可调整协议下对合作伙伴决策的敏感性往往会降低财务绩效。我们的研究结果证明了合作协议所带来的巨大利益，为决策者在发展供水伙伴关系方面提供了一个模板。
Urban water utilities, facing rising demands and limited supply expansion options, increasingly partner with neighboring utilities to develop and operate shared infrastructure. Inter‐utility agreements can reduce costs via economies of scale and help limit environmental impacts, as substitutes for independent investments in large capital projects. However, unexpected shifts in demand growth or water availability, deviating from projections underpinning cooperative agreements, can introduce both supply and financial risk to utility partners. Risks may also be compounded by asymmetric growth in demand across partners or inflexibility of the agreement structure itself to adapt to changing conditions of supply and demand. This work explores the viability of both fixed and adjustable capacity inter‐utility cooperative agreements to mitigate regional water supply and financial risk for utilities that vary in size, growth expectations, and independent infrastructure expansion options. Agreements formalized for a shared regional water treatment plant are found to significantly improve regional supply reliability and financial outcomes, despite highly correlated weather and climate across neighboring supply systems (e.g., concurrent drought events). Regional improvements in performance, however, mask tradeoffs among individual agreement partners. Adjustable treatment capacity allocations add flexibility to inter‐utility agreements but can compound financial risk to each utility as a function of the decision‐making of the other partners. Often the sensitivity to partners' decision‐making under an adjustable agreement degrades financial performance, relative to agreements with fixed capacities allocated to each partner. Our results demonstrate the significant benefits cooperative agreements offer, providing a template to aid decision‐makers in the development of water supply partnerships.
影响因子：
8.2
作者：
Borgomeo, Edoardo;Mortazavi-Naeini, Mohammad;Guillod, Benoit P.
通讯作者：
Guillod, Benoit P.