The water footprint of bioenergy

Gerbens-Leenes, P.W.; Hoekstra, Arjen Ysbert; Meer, Theodorus H. van der

doi:10.1073/pnas.0812619106

Cited by 631 publications

(374 citation statements)

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“…By evaluating the extent to which the global water cycle would be able to sustain such needs through biofuel production, we assess whether biofuels offer a way out of the mineral economy and a return to a more direct reliance on today's water resources. In particular, we focus on the hydrologic constraints to such a reversal process, while we refer the reader to other studies [Gerbens-Leenes et al, 2009;Cassidy et al, 2013;Rulli et al, 2016] for an analysis of similar constraints associated with land availability.…”

Section: 1002/2017ef000544mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Water is needed to extract coal and oil [Wu et al, 2009;Mielke et al, 2010], produce biofuel [Gerbens-Leenes et al, 2009;Rulli et al, 2016], operate cooling towers in thermoelectric plants [Mekonnen et al, 2015], clean solar panels from dust deposition [Ravi et al, 2014], and offset evaporative losses in reservoirs for hydropower generation [Bakken et al, 2013]. Most estimates of the water footprint of energy production from fossil fuels focus on the consumption of current water and therefore account for these water losses without considering that the accumulation of fossil fuels during geological times required water consumption for the growth of plant biomass.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ancient water supports today's energy needs

et al. 2017

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The water footprint for fossil fuels typically accounts for water utilized in mining and fuel processing, whereas the water footprint of biofuels assesses the agricultural water used by crops through their lifetime. Fossil fuels have an additional water footprint that is not easily accounted for: ancient water that was used by plants millions of years ago, before they were transformed into fossil fuel. How much water is mankind using from the past to sustain current energy needs? We evaluate the link between ancient water virtually embodied in fossil fuels to current global energy demands by determining the water demand required to replace fossil fuels with biomass produced with water from the present. Using equal energy units of wood, bioethanol, and biodiesel to replace coal, natural gas, and crude oil, respectively, the resulting water demand is 7.39 × 1013 m3 y−1, approximately the same as the total annual evaporation from all land masses and transpiration from all terrestrial vegetation. Thus, there are strong hydrologic constraints to a reliance on biofuel energy produced with water from the present because the conversion from fossil fuels to biofuels would have a disproportionate and unsustainable impact on the modern water. By using fossil fuels to meet today's energy needs, we are virtually using water from a geological past. The water cycle is insufficient to sustain the production of the fuel presently consumed by human societies. Thus, non‐fuel‐based renewable energy sources are needed to decrease mankind's reliance on fossil fuel energy without placing an overwhelming pressure on global freshwater resources.

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Section: 1002/2017ef000544mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ancient water supports today's energy needs

et al. 2017

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“…Research shows that the "water footprints" (amounts of freshwater used for irrigating) of some biodiesel-feedstock crops such as soybean and rapeseed are even higher than those of bioethanol-feedstock crops 21 . Growing crops to produce biofuels from edible biomass instead of food supply for a higher income in the regions where malnutrition exists might increase the risk of suffering famines 20 .…”

Section: Biofuelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Connecting Carbon Capture with Oceanic Biomass Production

Wang

2010

Nat Prec

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The climate change believed by anthropogenic emission is not isolated but tightly coupled with other issues including biodiversity loss and ocean acidification etc., and in order to prevent the potential serious impacts, both political and technological methods are being tried for greenhouse mitigation. Dimming the income sunlight by some "geoengineering" approaches currently seem ruinously expensive and technically difficult, and would not prevent the increase of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in atmosphere and ocean acidification, so capturing carbon to reduce the environmental concentration of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and promoting renewable energy development for the reduction of using fossil fuels are very necessary. Biofuels derived from natural and agricultural biomass could be deployed for power production and existing transportation needs. The current economics are more favorable for conversion of edible biomass into biofuels, which could spend plenty of freshwater and farmlands, compete with food supply, and create a "carbon debt" with local ecosystem destruction by deforestation to expand biofuel-crop production. So it is vital to develop processes for converting non-edible feedstock such as lignocellulose and microalgae into biofuels.Compared with lignocellulose, microalgae have higher growth rates, don't need plenteous freshwater for irrigating, and can grow in the conditions that are not favorable for terrestrial biomass growth. The current limitation of microalgal biofuels is the microalgae cultivation cost, and to compensate the high cost of microalgal biofuels, three suggestions are propounded here. (i) Using ships as the platforms of cultivating microalgae, producing biofuels, and transporting feedstock and products on a large scale on subtropical oligotrophic oceans, where the ocean's least productive waters are formed with compared peaceful surface condition and poor marine communities. (ii) Operating different kinds of oceanic biomass productions for high-value products to compensate the cost of microalgal biofuels. Different kinds of microalgae and macroalgae (seaweeds) could be cultivated for biofuels, chemicals, healthy food, and feed for breeding economic marine species to satisfy the accelerating demands for seafood supply and simultaneously mitigate the fast decline of wild stocks. (iii)Constituting financial subsidies to make CO 2 as the feedstock of microalgae cultivation for -1 -Nature Precedings :

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“…In response to our article on the blue and green water footprint (WF) of bioenergy (1), others propose to multiply each blue WF component by a water-stress index and neglect green WFs, because impacts would be nil (2). They propose to redefine the WF from a volumetric measure to an index resulting from multiplying volumes by impact factors.…”

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confidence: 99%