As technical coordinator of the Energy-Water Roadmap Program, Sandia National Laboratories is responsible for organizing the efforts of three regional needs assessment workshops in the western, central, and eastern U.S. Each Regional Needs Assessment Workshop will include experts from national, state, tribal, and local governments, universities, private industry, and non-government organizations to review regional water and energy use trends and identify emerging major energy and water needs and issues. The participants will also be asked to suggest improvements or changes in energy and water technology application, natural resource management, and natural resource use policies that could be implemented to help ensure reliability, secure, and sustainable energy supplies.

Each Regional Workshop will begin with a review of evolving issues and trends over energy and water resource needs projected availability and issues and will include an overview of the Energy-Water Roadmap Program. Each regional workshop will be devoted to targeted discussions focusing on the following regional issues and topics:

• Regional Energy-Water interdependencies,
• Regional trends and issues in energy and water use and production,
• Future major competing demands for water in each region, and
• Identification of the major regional gaps and issues in water and energy technology development and possible policy impacts on future energy supply reliability, security, and sustainability.