In late 2019, Berkeley Lab was selected to lead DOE’s Energy-Water desalination hub and formed the National Alliance for Water Innovation (NAWI). EESA and the Energy Technologies Area co-led the development of the NAWI proposal for Berkeley Lab, with other national lab, university, and industry partners. NAWI is a five-year, $110 million research program and public-private partnership, bringing together over 2000 individual NAWI Alliance members, over 460 partnering organizations, and numerous water-research facilities.

The $110M award is the largest single federal investment in clean water research since the Kennedy Administration. NAWI’s vision is to secure a resilient 21st-century water supply through dramatically expanding the availability, reliability, and affordability of clean water. The NAWI Hub represents a paradigm shift from custom-built, large, centralized facilities to distributed, modular water-treatment systems. NAWI’s work is also intended to help lower the energy demand of U.S. water supplies by advancing novel methods to purify nontraditional water sources at cost and energy pipe-parity to conventional fresh water resources.