by Mathew Carr
A U.S. energy policy that encourages manufacture of fuels from crops such as corn will likely constrain water supplies, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Nestle SA's chairman and chief executive officer, said.
A U.S. energy policy that encourages manufacture of fuels from crops such as corn will likely constrain water supplies, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Nestle SA's chairman and chief executive officer, said.
``If I had to identify one resource I'm worried about, that's water,'' Brabeck-Letmathe said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. ``There's no market mechanism that regulates water supply.''
Preventing water-supply problems would cost about $180 billion, less than the $550 billion cost of preventing global warming, the executive said.
``If water would have the correct price, then we wouldn't even be thinking about biofuels,'' Brabeck-Letmathe said.
Nestle, the world's biggest food maker, has cut its water consumption 50 percent since 2000, he said. ``If there's any resource in the world that we have to be extremely careful about, where we've already got a shortage, that's water.''
