Sustainable Water Resources Management in Small Greek Islands under Changing Climate

Abstract

Five different water resource management scenarios are examined on eight dry islands of the Aegean Sea in Greece, pitting the current practice of water hauling via ship against alternative water supply schemes in delivering a sustainable solution for meeting water demand. The first scenario employs current water supply practices along with the operation of domestic rainwater harvesting systems. Desalinated water, provided through the operation of wind-powered desalination plants, is considered the main source of potable water in the rest of scenarios. Wind-powered desalination may be combined with rainwater harvesting as a supplementary source of water and/or seawater pumping and an additional source of energy that is supplied to the system. All different alternatives are evaluated for a 30-year lifespan, and an optimal solution is proposed for each island, based on a life cycle cost (LCC) analysis. The performance of this solution is then assessed under six climate change (CC) scenarios in terms of the rate of on-grid versus off-grid renewable energy that is required in order to achieve a certain reliability level. Overall, the examined scenarios show a decreasing performance in terms of reliability under CC for the eight islands.