The environmental relevance of freshwater consumption in global power production

Pfister, Stephan; Saner, Dominik; Koehler, Annette

doi:10.1007/s11367-011-0284-8

Cited by 110 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…The agriculture and food sectors are highlighted because they account for around 70% of global freshwater withdrawals [10] and are a major source of emissions responsible for freshwater quality degradation. This has led to the emergence of product water footprints as another stand-alone LCA-based environmental indicator [11], used especially in relation to food products [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19], bio-fuels [20][21][22] and other water-intensive industry sectors such as electricity generation [23].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Carbon and Water Footprints for Beef Cattle Production in Southern Australia

2011

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Stand-alone environmental indicators based on life cycle assessment (LCA), such as the carbon footprint and water footprint, are becoming increasingly popular as a means of directing sustainable production and consumption. However, individually, these metrics violate the principle of LCA known as comprehensiveness and do not necessarily provide an indication of overall environmental impact. In this study, the carbon footprints for six diverse beef cattle production systems in southern Australia were calculated and found to range from 10.1 to 12.7 kg CO 2 e kg −1 live weight (cradle to farm gate). This compared to water footprints, which ranged from 3.3 to 221 L H 2 Oe kg −1 live weight. For these systems, the life cycle impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water use were subsequently modelled using endpoint indicators and aggregated to enable comparison. In all cases, impacts from GHG emissions were most important, representing 93 to 99% of the combined scores. As such, the industry's existing priority of GHG emissions reduction is affirmed. In an attempt to balance the demands of comprehensiveness and simplicity, to achieve reliable public reporting of the environmental impacts of a large number of products across the economy, a multi-indicator approach based on combined midpoint and endpoint life cycle impact assessment modelling is proposed. For agri-food OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2011, 3 2444 products, impacts from land use should also be included as tradeoffs between GHG emissions, water use and land use are common.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparing Carbon and Water Footprints for Beef Cattle Production in Southern Australia

2011

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“…In relation to the power generation sectors, the amount of blue water was calculated by multiplying the power generation by source and state from the Brazilian Energy Research Institute [31] by the consumption coefficients for each technology from NREL [32]. For the specific case of hydropower, we used the consumption (evaporated) water coefficient for Brazil [33]. The grey water footprint was considered negligible for these sectors compared to agricultural and urban wastewater pollution.…”

Section: Data Sourcesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncovering the Green, Blue, and Grey Water Footprint and Virtual Water of Biofuel Production in Brazil: A Nexus Perspective

et al. 2017

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Brazil plays a major role in the global biofuel economy as the world's second largest producer and consumer and the largest exporter of ethanol. Its demand is expected to significantly increase in coming years, largely driven by national and international carbon mitigation targets. However, biofuel crops require significant amounts of water and land resources that could otherwise be used for the production of food, urban water supply, or energy generation. Given Brazil's uneven spatial distribution of water resources among regions, a potential expansion of ethanol production will need to take into account regional or local water availability, as an increased water demand for irrigation would put further pressure on already water-scarce regions and compete with other users. By applying an environmentally extended multiregional input-output (MRIO) approach, we uncover the scarce water footprint and the interregional virtual water flows associated with sugarcane-derived biofuel production driven by domestic final consumption and international exports in 27 states in Brazil. Our results show that bio-ethanol is responsible for about one third of the total sugarcane water footprint besides sugar and other processed food production. We found that richer states such as São Paulo benefit by accruing a higher share of economic value added from exporting ethanol as part of global value chains while increasing water stress in poorer states through interregional trade. We also found that, in comparison with other crops, sugarcane has a comparative advantage when rainfed while showing a comparative disadvantage as an irrigated crop; a tradeoff to be considered when planning irrigation infrastructure and bioethanol production expansion.

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“…Terms like water consumption, water losses, water withdrawal and water footprint seem to have slightly different meanings determined by the context and are applied in an inconsistent manner in a number of relevant publications (Hutson et al, 2004;Kenny et al, 2009;Fthenakis and Kim, 2010;Macknick et al, 2012b;Pfister et al, 2011;Hoekstra et al, 2011). In this paper we have defined water consumption in hydropower production as the quantity of water that leaves the analyzed system, and can hence be considered lost for hydropower production and the downstream water users/ecosystem.…”

Section: Terms and Definitions Used In The Context Of Water Consumptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to the primary sources listed in Table 1, a number of publications are considered relevant to this topic and should be mentioned, such as US Department of Energy (2006), Fthenakis and Kim (2010), Macknick et al (2011Macknick et al ( , 2012a, Pfister et al (2011) andIPCC (2012). The IPPC Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources (IPCC, 2012) is definitely the most acclaimed of these publications and uses the following sources as documentation for their estimates of water consumption from hydropower; Gleick (1993), Torcellini et al (2003), Mielke et al (2010), Fthenakis and Kim (2010), indicating that until recently there was extensive re-use of the geographically very limited data set published by Gleick (1993).…”

Section: Available Publications and Their Range In Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This approach is developed with agricultural production in mind. Pfister et al (2011) propose an approach for assessing water consumption and impact from power production by introducing climatic data, where potential evaporation affects the water consumption according to the traditional approach, and aridity relates to the water availability.…”

Section: The Water Footprint Concept and Its Lack Of Connection To Immentioning

confidence: 99%

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Water consumption from hydropower plants – review of published estimates and an assessment of the concept

Bakken

Killingtveit

Engeland

et al. 2013

Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci.

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Abstract. Since the report from IPCC on renewable energy (IPCC, 2012) was published; more studies on water consumption from hydropower have become available. The newly published studies do not, however, contribute to a more consistent picture on what the "true" water consumption from hydropower plants is. The dominant calculation method is the gross evaporation from the reservoirs divided by the annual power production, which appears to be an oversimplistic calculation method that possibly produces a biased picture of the water consumption of hydropower plants. This review paper shows that the water footprint of hydropower is used synonymously with water consumption, based on gross evaporation rates. This paper also documents and discusses several methodological problems when applying this simplified approach (gross evaporation divided by annual power production) for the estimation of water consumption from hydropower projects. A number of short-comings are identified, including the lack of clarity regarding the setting of proper system boundaries in space and time. The methodology of attributing the water losses to the various uses in multi-purpose reservoirs is not developed. Furthermore, a correct and fair methodology for handling water consumption in reservoirs based on natural lakes is needed, as it appears meaningless that all the evaporation losses from a close-to-natural lake should be attributed to the hydropower production. It also appears problematic that the concept is not related to the impact the water consumption will have on the local water resources, as high water consumption values might not be problematic per se. Finally, it appears to be a paradox that a reservoir might be accorded a very high water consumption/footprint and still be the most feasible measure to improve the availability of water in a region. We argue that reservoirs are not always the problem; rather they may contribute to the solution of the problems of water scarcity. The authors consider that an improved conceptual framework is needed in order to calculate the water footprint from hydropower projects in a more reasonable way.

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The environmental relevance of freshwater consumption in global power production

Cited by 110 publications

References 24 publications

Comparing Carbon and Water Footprints for Beef Cattle Production in Southern Australia

Comparing Carbon and Water Footprints for Beef Cattle Production in Southern Australia

Uncovering the Green, Blue, and Grey Water Footprint and Virtual Water of Biofuel Production in Brazil: A Nexus Perspective

Water consumption from hydropower plants – review of published estimates and an assessment of the concept

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