About STEEP

Water supply and wastewater treatment services are basic but critical utilities that have major roles in supporting the social and domestic needs of people, sustaining local economic activities, and ensuring healthy urban environments.

By 2050, about 65% of the population in Asia and the Pacific are expected to live in cities. This dictates the need to increase access to water supply and wastewater management services. The increase in service coverage would also translate to additional investments by water utility operators, which will lead to increased energy demand in their operations. This means energy management should be incorporated into the designs of urban water supply and wastewater utility investments to ensure optimal operations.

 STEEP is a free Excel-based reference guide that can be used to make system assessments and identify potential areas for energy use savings in existing or planned water supply and wastewater facility projects. Since 2017, STEEP has been continuously developed based on lessons and experiences from pilot assessments carried out in various water and wastewater investment projects financed by ADB. Based on the results of pilot assessments and accepted principles of energy management, the potential energy savings can range from 20% to 80%, depending on the type and stage of project implementation.

 Assuming that all of the existing water and wastewater system facilities in the developing member countries are within this range of inefficiency (i.e., 40% as average), implementing the recommendations from STEEP could potentially save as much as 36 billion kWh of energy or more than 25 million tons of CO2 emissions per year. At a conservative average electricity cost of $0.07 per kWh, the total savings annually for the utilities would exceed $2.5 billion. This would result to almost 0.5% savings of the total CO2.