Review of Operational Water Consumption and Withdrawal Factors for Electricity Generating Technologies

Abstract

NOTICEThis report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. Neither the United States government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or any agency thereof. Executive SummaryThis report provides estimates of operational water withdrawal and water consumption factors for electricity generating technologies in the United States. Estimates of water factors were collected from published primary literature and were not modified except for unit conversions. The presented water factors may be useful in modeling and policy analyses where reliable power plant level data are not available. Major findings of the report include:• The power sector withdraws more water than any other sector in the United States and is heavily dependent on available water resources. Changes in water resources may impact the reliability of power generation.• Water withdrawal and consumption factors vary greatly across and within fuel technologies. Water factors show greater agreement when organized according to cooling technologies as opposed to fuel technologies. Once-through cooling technologies withdraw 10 to 100 times more water per unit of electric generation than recirculating cooling technologies; recirculating cooling technologies consume at least twice as much water as once-through cooling technologies.• A transition to a less carbon-intensive electricity sector could result in either an increase or decrease in water use, depending on the choice of technologies and cooling systems employed. Concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies and coal facilities with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) capabilities have the highest water consumption values when using a recirculating cooling system. Non-thermal renewables, such as photovoltaics (PV) and wind, have the lowest water consumption factors.• Federal datasets on water use in power plants have numerous gaps and methodological inconsistencies. Federal agencies are currently coordinating to improve these data. Water use factors discussed here are good proxies for use in modeling and policy analyses, at least until power plant level data improve.

Long-term water demand for electricity, industry and households

“…From the World Development Indicators (World Bank, 2013), population and Industry Value Added (IVA) are used for aggregating from countries to 26 IMAGE regions. Water use intensities for the electricity sector are based on Macknick et al (2011) and fuel-toelectricity conversion efficiencies are based on TIMER, the energy sub-model of IMAGE (PBL, 2014). Historical population size, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and IVA at the regional level were obtained from PBL (2014).…”

“…Water intensity e p,r (m 3 /GJ) is the water volume used per gigajoule excess heat (Supplementary Table S2). It is held constant across regions and time at the levels of the year 2000, which are back-calculated from USA data (Macknick et al, 2011) and fuel efficiencies from TIMER. The cooling system market shares M p,c,r add up to 1 for each combination of plant/fuel type p and region r, and are specified in Section 2.5.…”

“…The exact same formula applies to consumption C E r (in m 3 /yr), but with different intensities (I p,r ) (Macknick et al, 2011) and different water efficiency factors ðE E c Þ…”

Direct impacts of alternative energy scenarios on water demand in the Middle East and North Africa

“…Analyses of the water requirements, both withdrawal and consumption, of energy extraction and conversion so far have mostly focused on the United States (US) (Harte and El-Gasseir 1978, Gleick 1994, DOE 2006, Mielke et al 2010, Macknick et al 2011, where locally water shortages can limit potential energy production. Information on fossil fuel extraction are limited and mostly stem from case studies in the US or Canada (Argonne 2008, Griffiths and Woynillowicz 2003, NRTEE 2010, CAPP 2012.…”

Statistical estimation of missing data in life cycle inventory: an application to hydroelectric power plants

“…Water is essential and most important by weight or volume, its quality is altered and course permanently changed. Often ignored, accounting for water consumption and withdrawal of power generation technologies is changing, however, out of necessity (Fthenakis and Chul Kim, 2010;Macknick et al, 2011). For hydroelectricity, quantities can be estimated from production data and Equation (1) and the impacts of water use have recently been characterized in LCA (Pfister et al, 2011).…”