Axios

NEW YORK — Access to water depends on reliable infrastructure, sufficient investment, and strategic conservation, leaders said at an Axios House roundtable at Climate Week and the UN General Assembly.

Why it matters: Water has joined energy as a flashpoint in the AI era, and businesses increasingly see it as a factor in whether or not they can grow.

Axios' Ben Geman and Amy Harder moderated the Sept. 23 roundtable discussion. The event was sponsored by Schneider Electric.

5 big takeaways from the conversation:

1. Water is a "fundamental economic input," said Aleem Remtula, WaterEquity managing director of private equity and infrastructure. "A drought in Kenya for a farmer is not an environmental issue; it's an income generation issue. It's a food security issue."
2. AI can be an "enabler" for smarter water use, said Brandon Oyer, Amazon Web Services head of energy and water for the Americas. "I see it as an opportunity from an infrastructure perspective, on top of the software that can be enabled."
3. Water risk is intensely local, making community-specific investment and messaging critical, according to Mission North head of energy and infrastructure practice Julia Kelson and Salesforce senior vice president of impact Sunya Norman.
4. Aging water systems face a large investment gap, said U.S. Water Alliance CEO Mami Hara. "The federal government provides around 7% of the need for water infrastructure funding," she said, and "we are not seeing the kind of support for water that is needed."
5. Businesses tend to recognize water's financial influence only after disruption hits, Pacific Institute president and CEO Jason Morrison said. When it becomes a "supply chain disruption or operational disruption … then it becomes understood at a board level as being strategic and important."

Content from the sponsor's remarks:

In opening remarks, Andre Marino, Schneider Electric North America SVP of Industrial and Process Automation, said there's more to water than just the AI debate.

• "We have onshoring manufacturing coming, we have population growing, coupled with the climate challenge that we are facing … [and] although we have all these challenges, we have the technology to support us."

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