Energy's Dangerous Water Addiction
09/12/2012
SustainableBusiness.com News
Should society devote millions of gallons of water to fracking or running coal plants amid water shortages endangering the global food supply?
The record-breaking US drought this summer and energy-related water shortages across India and China are highlighting another environmental side effect of oil and gas exploration, coal-fired power plants and nuclear plant development – they all use way more water than our society can afford.
And that's just the water these activities prevent from being used for agricultural purposes or human consumption. It doesn't take account the water that faces potential contamination risk.
The threat appears most acute in Asia, where rivers are being diverted feed thirsty coal-fire power plants: India and China alone plan to build $720 billion in new coal generators over the next two decades.
The ones in China will drink up 82 billion cubic meters of water a year by 2030, which is second to farming interests, estimates McKinsey & Co. Grasslands in Inner Mongolia are already drying up as a result.
In India, more than 73% of the planned new coal capacity is in water-scare or stressed areas, reports Bloomberg. The ground zero, if you will, in India is the Mahandhi River, which is being tapped for numerous industrial interests alongside the coal development. Some farmers have even committed suicide over the situation.
About half of the planned power capacity across India and Southeast Asia is subject to water-scarcity risks.
"You're going to have a huge issue with the competition between water, energy and food," Vineet Mittal, managing director of Welspun Energy, told Bloomberg. "Water is something that everyone should be probing every chief executive about."
Coal plants use about three times more water on average as a natural gas generator, per unit of power produced, estimates the US Department of Energy. Nuclear generators use even more.
The water is needed for steam, as well as to help condense and process waste. Oh, and don't forget that water is used during coal mining to remove impurities and turn it into slurry, which is transported through pipelines.
Fracking's Drinking Habit
Natural gas has its own water addiction problem.
A single fracking well for either oil or natural gas can require up to 5 million gallons, which is being sourced from places such as municipal water supplies, farm ponds and irrigation ditches. Once water is used for fracking purposes, it is essentially taken out of the water supply.
Typically, energy companies need to lease the rights to this water – which can be a welcome source of funding for municipal or state governments. But, increasingly, those interests are at odds with those of the agricultural industry, reports The New York Times.
"Energy companies are moving quickly to shore up supplies," Reagan Waskom, director of the Colorado Water Institute at Colorado State University, told The New York Times. "They're going to find it, and they're going to pay what they need to pay, and it's on an order of magnitude of what crop producers can afford to pay. That changes the whole deal."
In Colorado, the water needs of the state's gas and oil interests will grow at an estimated 16% over the next three years.
In late June, 37 approvals for water withdrawals related to fracking in Pennsylvania and New York were withdrawn by the Susquehanna River Basic Commission because of the region's water shortage over the summer.
Electricity production at coal, nuclear and natural gas power plants is the fastest growing use of freshwater in the US, accounting for half of all withdrawals from rivers, reports EcoWatch.
That's more than any other economic sector, including agriculture, and it's a source for real concern as climate change alters water supply dynamics around the world.
Renewable energy isn't immune, but comparatively speaking, solar PV and wind are the least water-intensive energy generation methods, according to research from the World Policy Institute.
For more research on the energy-water nexus:
Website: www.worldpolicy.org/policy-paper/2011/03/18/water-energy-nexus