The Water Demand of Energy: Implications for Sustainable Energy Policy Development

Abstract

With energy security, climate change mitigation, and sustainable development as three main motives, global energy policies have evolved, now asking for higher shares of renewable energies, shale oil and gas resources in the global energy supply portfolios. Yet, concerns have recently been raised about the environmental impacts of the renewable energy development, supported by many governments around the world. For example, governmental ethanol subsidies and mandates in the U.S. are aimed to increase the biofuel supply while the water footprint of this type of energy might be 70-400 times higher than the water footprint of conventional fossil energy sources. Hydrofracking, as another example, has been recognized as a high water-intensive procedure that impacts the surface and ground water in both quality and quantity. Hence, monitoring the water footprint of the energy mix is significantly important and could have implications for energy policy development. This paper estimates the water footprint of current and projected global energy policies, based on the energy production and consumption scenarios, developed by the International Energy Outlook of the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The outcomes reveal the amount of water required for total energy production in the world will increase by 37%-66% during the next two decades, requiring extensive improvements in water use efficiency of the existing energy production technologies, especially renewables.

Cooling water for Britain's future electricity supply

“…Some studies seek to determine whether high temperatures and reducing river flows due to climate change present risks to thermoelectric power production, usually at a river basin scale (Cohen et al, 2014;Förster and Lilliestam, 2009;Vögele, 2009, 2013;Koch et al, 2014;Naughton et al, 2012;Scanlon et al, 2013;Stillwell and Webber, 2013;Stillwell et al, 2011). Others have quantified current and future freshwater demands from different energy pathways, such as for the USA (Macknick et al, 2012b), the UK (Byers et al, 2014;Hall et al, 2015;Tran et al, 2014), China (Pan et al, 2012) or the whole world (Hadian and Madani, 2013).…”

Multi-level multi-criteria analysis of alternative fuels for waste collection vehicles in the United States

“…The upgrade process electricity consumption was 234 estimated by Läntelä et al, 2012 to be between 0.43-0.55 kwh/Nm 3 . The WFP of the US electricity 235 was estimated for the 2013 U.S. electric grid energy mix using the WFP of different energy sources 236 compiled by Hadian and Madani (2013). The overall total WFP of the U.S. electric energy mix was 237 calculated at 9 L per kWh.…”

Energy trends and the water-energy binomium for Brazil

“…It accounts for 20% of the total water withdrawals worldwide (Hadian and Madani 2013). Water is ubiquitous in the entire energy supply chain.…”

“…Water is required for energy generation, exploration, processing and transport of fossil fuels (EIA 2012). For instance, water is used for drilling and fracturing in oil and gas exploration, large amounts of water is needed for cooling systems in thermo power plants and nuclear power stations, large amounts of water is required for hydropower stations to produce electricity, and feedstock for biofuel production need considerably large amounts of water for their growing (Service 2009, Mekonnen and Hoekstra 2012, Da Rocha et al 2013, Hadian and Madani 2013, Zhang and Anadon 2013.…”

“…In coal and nuclear plants, a large amount of water is circulated for cooling purposes. Part of this portion of water is reused for energy production in those plants and the rest is evaporated or discharged into original source, causing a range of environmental issues, such as fish mortality and algae growth (Hadian and Madani 2013). Renewable and clean ways of energy production such as hydropower, wind power, ocean power and geothermal energy are recently regarded as good alternatives to meet energy production requirements and reduce the water stress (IPCC 2011).…”