Water or energy; the choice should be obvious

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By now, we have all become aware of the dangers associated with pursuing a fossil fuel driven energy policy.  Not only are carbon emissions becoming an increasing concern for people around the globe, but depleting fossil fuel resources ensure price volatility in the short- and long-term, environmental impacts will only worsen as harder to get supplies are all that remain, and wars over control of resources become commonplace.  Add to the list of concerns a growing water shortage that threatens to leave humanity without one of its basic needs for survival.

Water is not a problem because desalination is on the rise, right?  Well, it’s not that simple.  An Oil Drum report on the energy costs of desalination states, “the interrelationships of energy and water in our social systems will be paramount going forward, as we need water to procure most energy and energy to procure most water; and we are learning that more money won't magically procure more of either”.  Desalination plants require an enormous amount of energy in order to produce freshwater from seawater; the saltier the water, the more energy is needed.  Where does that energy come from?  It comes from power plants, which require water in order to produce the electricity needed to desalinate the water.  Water is needed in power plants to produce steam to spin the turbines that produce the electricity, and it is needed to cool the equipment.  The report from Oil Drum suggests that building desalination plants is using freshwater from one place to create freshwater in another, actually losing money and water in the process; the only thing we are gaining is more emissions.

Then, let’s capture the emissions from our power plants and make the process of generating electricity cleaner.  In March of this year Carl Bauer, director of the National Energy Technology Laboratory at the U.S. DOE gave a statement to the Energy and Natural Resource Committee in the U.S. Senate.  In his statement, he said, “Of particular concern is the potential implication on freshwater requirements in a future in which CO2 capture technology is required to be installed on coal-based power systems. Implementation of today’s CO2 capture technologies would significantly increase freshwater consumption by fossil-based power plants”.  Essentially, by installing CO2 capture technology on coal-based power plants, we further lessen the available freshwater supply in our country. 

Freshwater is used to support many of our basic life processes.  We drink it, we bathe with it, we use it for agriculture.  These three basic life supports should be non-negotiable, but it appears that the energy debate has become so focused on emissions that these vital concerns regarding freshwater availability are being pushed by the wayside in favor of energy for machines.  Try going one day without water; then go a day without electricity.  I am sure that the debate over which is more valuable will come to a quick end.  If we tell people that their drinking water and food supplies are threatened by our current energy production methods, will we alter our demand for energy?  I’m betting most people will side with energy until their water bills skyrocket or their faucets turn off.  In the meantime, the machines are winning.

Current debates about energy are so wrapped up in controlling emissions through any method, that we are losing sight of our primary responsibilities: Survival and stewardship.  We are throwing all of our resources at treating symptoms of our disease; clean the energy without reducing our demands does not cure the problem.  How will generating cheap, cleaner electricity aid humanity if freshwater becomes scarce.  Personally, I prefer water over energy; but even that is not so simple.

Energy is needed to clean water in wastewater facilities and it is needed to transport water to our homes, but it is becoming apparent that we are heading to a point where we will have to choose between using available freshwater supplies to generate energy or to sustain life.  We seem to be currently choosing energy over life, recreation over responsibility, and consumerism over sustainability; perhaps this is what Hollywood suggested through ‘the rise of the machines’ themes.

How we generate electricity in terms of water consumed is of the utmost importance, but emissions seem to have the spotlight right now.  Nuclear power, coal, oil, and natural gas make up the majority of our power generating matrix.  Some of these resources emit fewer emissions than their counterparts, and some require less water to generate energy than others.

According to a 2002 report by the Electric Power Research Institute, “it appears that the larger the shift from coal and nuclear to natural gas, the greater the decrease in water consumption for power generation.”  The report goes on to state that “it is unclear whether total U.S. freshwater consumption by the power generation sector will increase or decrease over the next 20+ years, while generation itself will increase markedly. The answer depends on the relative rate of decrease in unit (per MWh) of cooling water consumption compared with the rate of increase in MWh produced”.  Capturing emission does nothing to decrease water consumption; in fact, it raises it. 

So, will adapting our power plants with closed-loop systems that attempt to capture evaporating water as it is used to cool the power generating equipment solve the problem.  Not if we continue to expand our electricity generating capacity. Even in closed-loop systems, some water is lost, and added up across the all of the U.S. power plants’ generating capacity, it is a significant amount of water.  When we figure other parts of the world into the equation, it just gets worse; a majority of China’s power plants are the dirtiest, most water consumptive kind.  Add carbon capture technology to the mix, and water resources will become even further strained than they already are.  We might be fighting water wars and not oil wars in the future.

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The above graph suggests that natural gas is the answer to our water woes; so, let’s use more natural gas and preserve our precious water supply.  It’s not that simple, though.  BusinessWeek did a piece back in Nov. ’08 asking whether or not natural gas drilling is threatening water supplies.  Natural gas drillers use a practice called hydraulic fracturing (or fracing) to obtain the gas beneath the earth’s surface.  “Today fracturing is used in nine out of 10 natural gas wells in the United States.”

According to Naturalgas.org, “CO2-Sand fracturing involves using a mixture of sand propants and liquid CO2 to fracture formations, creating and enlarging cracks through which oil and natural gas may flow more freely,” but there are other types of hydraulic fracturing that use chemical additives to improve flow and output.

Last year, a hydrologist doing work in Wyoming sampled water 300 feet down and found concentrations of benzene (causes leukemia) 1500 times the level safe for people, according to a ProPublica report.  “The results sent shockwaves through the energy industry and state and federal regulatory agencies.”

Halliburton, Schlumberger, and BJ Services are the three main players in the fracturing business.  These three companies “control the vast majority of the $15 billion hydraulic-fracturing market”; no wonder they were able to capitalize on “a key legislative exemption from federal oversight that they won in 2005”.  

Upon discovery of groundwater contamination due to natural gas fracturing, regulatory agencies requested the list of chemicals being injected into the ground in order to free up the gas deposits.  The industry responded by saying that their formulas were protected as ‘trade secrets’, like Coca Cola.  “Of the 300-odd compounds that private researchers and the Bureau of Land Management suspect are being used, 65 are listed as hazardous by the federal government.  Many of the rest are unstudied and unregulated, leaving a gaping hole in the nation's scientific understanding of how widespread drilling might affect water resources”, according to a Society of Environmental Journalist report.

Congress just began hearings on the number of exemptions and loopholes handed out to the oil and gas industry during Bush and Cheney’s reign regarding hydraulic fracturing.  Perhaps health problems, water and food shortages, environmental collapse, species extinction, and skyrocketing costs associated with basic services all due to our addiction to energy is what is ultimately causing people to question what they value most in life. What will we choose?

Check out an additional video on hydraulic fracturing HERE.

So, desalination will not solve our problems, carbon capture technologies will not solve them either, and natural gas is not the answer. Solar power does not get a free pass either.  Solar power plants in the desert Southwest use considerably more water to cool their generating equipment than coal-fired plants, but do so in environments that have very little water to start with.  According to a DOE report, “a coal fired plant uses 110 to 300 gallons per megawatt hour; a nuclear plant uses between 500 and 1100 gallons; and a solar parabolic trough plant uses 760 -920 gallons”.  

Perhaps the solution is in what human beings have fought for through every age; that is decentralized power.  Whenever power became concentrated in the hands of the few, people found a way to take it back and distribute it.  Large scale power plants that supply energy to millions of people is not the most efficient way to do things.  Without putting a cap on population, individualized power sources such as solar panels on rooftops and neighborhood wind farms is the only thing that will lessen our demand for energy and our subsequent draw on available freshwater supplies.  Want to go for a drive; save up your trash and yard clippings and distill them into ethanol.  Without a societal shift toward more local, simpler lives, we will continue on this path toward a day of reckoning.

See associated videos HERE.