Las Vegas is a Thirsty Monster

City of WasteThe Nevada Supreme Court has struck down a Las Vegas plan to "siphon water from the state's rural north," leaving Las Vegas thirsty for now.  Of course, the extreme downturn which has hit Las Vegas harder than many other areas of the country, means that the city has bought some time with its water supply.  But it can't change the fact that Las Vegas must be our country's most resource intensive (and wasteful) city.

I have been to Las Vegas several times (all for work).  Every time as I approach the strip from the airport, I am struck by the city's lack of solar panels.  Surely if any city is as power hungry as Las Vegas, and as drenched with sunlight year round, solar panels would be a natural choice?  A casino sized battery of solar panels would be expensive, but I can only imagine they would pay for themselves within a short time.  And as a bonus, the panels could be arranged in order to provide strategic shade, thus cutting the hotel's air conditioning bills.

Let's talk about the air conditioning.  Those casinos are huge, they have vast open spaces, and millions of hotel rooms which will stand empty for two thirds of the day while their occupants are out on the town.  How much does Las Vegas spend on air conditioning per person?  Remember too that this is practically a year round expense.

Why not capture some of that rising heat for air turbines?  Again, the initial cost would be high, but the long term savings would be astounding.

Unfortunately Las Vegas has no effective way to create water out of thin air.  There are systems you can use to pull humidity from the air and turn it into drinking water, but the air in the desert is too dry for these systems to be much use.  Instead the city has to resort to pulling its water from far away.  Thus dehydrating parts of the country which would be pretty dry even if they weren't gripped by a record drought.

And what happens to that water?  A lot of it is wasted by hotel guests in long showers, frequent toilet flushings, and leaving the tap running while brushing their teeth.  Even more is used in hotel facilities like dishwashing in the restaurants and laundry services.  And of course, thousands of gallons are pumped into the hotels' various flagship fountains, to be splashed around and evaporated into the dry desert sky.

If America wants to put its climate change money where its mouth is, we need to think about shutting down Las Vegas!  Or convincing Vegas that it needs to go green in a serious way.  When I was there, the only nod to the environment that I saw was a request that you only ask the hotel staff to wash towels that really needed washing.  

There are a lot of obvious ways to green up Las Vegas, and all of our desert cities (Phoenix, I'm looking at you!) need to start planning for change now.  Before change comes to them unbidden.