BioPod

Home wastewater treatment can come to you from - - BioPod.  It will be interesting to see the limits of decentralized systems applied to residential markets.  With operations, maintenance, permitting, and local restrictions - - the home wastewater treatment could be the outer limits of the practicable.  Home wastewater treatment raises the important system questions; Where will decentralization end?  What are the limits to the economies of scale in water markets in an era of scarce availability?

Three words are important as legacy systems and companies potentially face enormous pressures and change.  The three are disruptive (How are new and disruptive technologies positioned to challenge the old legacies of centralized energy and wastewater systems?), decentralization (How do much higher energy prices impact the centralized economies of scale associated with everything from agriculture, to retail supply chains, to energy networks, to the water that I utilize on my lawn?), and distribution (What are the new local distribution channels in a world changed by disruptive technologies and decentralization?).

Looking back from 2050, we could see a world in which homeowners pay far less for energy because their solar shingles on the roof produces a surplus of electricity that they can sell back to their power company.  The lawn watering bill is cut by 80% because of genetic engineering of landscaping and retention of rainwater on the property.  Finally, in the water constrained southwestern U.S., you have a choice with your "gray water" from the shower - - either utilize it on site or sell it back to the water utility (or the highest bidder).

Our future could be much more disrupted, decentralized, and locally distributed than we have yet to imagine.