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Replacing Coal with Gas or Renewables Saves Billions of Gallons of Water:
"While most attention has been focused on the climate and air quality benefits of switching from coal, this new study shows that the transition to natural gas—and even more so, to renewable energy sources—has resulted in saving billions of gallons of water," said Avner Vengosh, professor of geochemistry and water quality at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment.
[...] "For every megawatt of electricity produced using natural gas instead of coal, the amount of water withdrawn from local rivers and groundwater is reduced by 10,500 gallons, the equivalent of a 100-day water supply for a typical American household," said Andrew Kondash, a postdoctoral researcher at Duke, who led the study as part of his doctoral dissertation under Vengosh.
[...] If all coal-fired power plants are converted to natural gas, the annual water savings will reach 12,250 billion gallons—that's 260% of current annual U.S. industrial water use.
Although the magnitude of water use for coal mining and fracking is similar, cooling systems in natural gas power plants use much less water in general than those in coal plants. That can quickly add up to substantial savings, since 40% of all water use in the United States currently goes to cooling thermoelectric plants, Vengosh noted.
[...] Even further savings could be realized by switching to solar or wind energy. The new study shows that the water intensity of these renewable energy sources, as measured by water use per kilowatt of electricity, is only 1% to 2% of coal or natural gas's water intensity.
"Switching to solar or wind energy would eliminate much of the water withdrawals and water consumption for electricity generation in the U.S.," Vengosh said.
Quantification of the water-use reduction associated with the transition from coal to natural gas in the U.S. electricity sector, Environmental Research Letters (DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/ab4d71)
(Score: 1, Troll) by Arik on Wednesday October 23 2019, @09:14AM (16 children)
I didn't actually track down the original paper and read it. But just from the abstract this reeks of buzzwords for grants academia.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Wednesday October 23 2019, @09:35AM (11 children)
Right. By that logic, I could solve the world's water problems with a single litre of water. I give it to a thirsty person to drink, but it's "still there" as urine, which will eventually make its way back into the hydro cycle to be cleansed and then drunk by the next person, and the next, and the next...
By removing this water from the ground / river and putting it into the sky, you stop it being used in some other way. OK, it might become available for use elsewhere much later, but it's needed *here* and *now*.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Arik on Wednesday October 23 2019, @09:44AM (8 children)
Doesn't take all that long. But yes, if this is being done in an area where water is scarce, /that/ could be a problem.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:12AM (5 children)
There are still places (Switzerland, for example) where fresh drinkable water is available in overabundance. People do tend to congregate in those kind of places.
With 8 billion people sucking on the straw, those places are becoming quite rare. India, for example, made a real mess of trying to access their abundant, and arsenic laced, groundwater.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:23AM (4 children)
Also a tremendous problem with pollution.
I hope they sort that out.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:31AM (3 children)
You don't support 1300 million people without abundant water.
The real problem with the groundwater was that they irrigated croplands with it and the contaminants quickly built up in the topsoil to toxic levels. So, croplands that used to be useless due to lack of water became useless within a decade or so due to toxic contamination.
The World Bank: turning farmland into a non-renewable resource since 1969.
Actually, IDK if World Bank was behind the borehole initiative, it was some bunch of multi-national do-gooders who came, drilled, saw a bunch of smiling faces and went home feeling good about themselves. When the episode fades into antiquity it will probably be covered in the same historical paragraph as Roman soldiers salting enemy croplands.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:34AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:20PM (1 child)
World Bank provides capital for projects like this. But it's not their purpose to check if the project is done correctly. That's up to local authorities.
As always, the contractors cheat to lower costs and the government has poor oversight. Then everything gets fucked over. But the fucking was not done by World Bank!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @01:15PM
But notice how fucking and $ always seem to be interconnected.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:57AM (1 child)
Consumed means consumed, no matter the abundance of the pool from which it is consumed.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Wednesday October 23 2019, @11:07AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 23 2019, @10:09AM
Less than 1% of water on Earth is "accessible" to use as fresh liquid water, when we suck on that resource we tip the balance toward the other 99%
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:03PM
Much later? Hours/days later, more like. Not 'much later' like months or years. In most cases, it will fall and end up in water/ground table. Sometimes, the ocean.
But ocean water is *constantly* picked up via evaporation, then dropped as rainwater on the continents. It's why BC is so rainy, why it's a rain forest. In the winter, BC's land is close to 0C. Air over the water is at 10C, 15C due to ocean currents. Via evaporation, drier air picks up water vapour... and then when it hits the land, it cools, and can't hold all the water.
I agree that ground water is indeed useful deep in the continent, but most power plants draw from rivers for cooling and what not.
I think the real complaint here is 'consumed'. Horse radish to that, people need to use words that mean the right thing. If I consume a piece of meat, it isn't meat coming out the other end. It's not like it can be 'cleaned' and restored to the same thing going in, either. Water? In most cases, it's water not fit to drink, turning into water fit to drink!
Yup.. water from river (not fit to drink, typically), ends up in the air, and eventually falls as pure H20.
And btw, water pulled from ground water tables doesn't always stay 'pulled'. I live on a well, and when my septic system processes water -- it ends up back in the ground table. For some, this isn't the case.. but for me it is.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @09:49AM (2 children)
Good luck quenching your thirst with water vapors.
' cause I'm too sexy for my cat
Too sexy for my hat...???
Or otherwise why? You such a genius or inspired by Gods you can afford to cast The Truth to the world without needing to read and much less to study?
Or is your ignorance just as good as a researcher's science?
Or is it that you like slinging bullshit and see what sticks and what doesn't?
Or... maybe you can enlighten us?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Arik on Wednesday October 23 2019, @09:52AM (1 child)
It is exceedingly rare for an abstract that reads like buzzword nonsense to be associated with a paper worth an hour or more of my time find a 'pirate' link for.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @11:18AM
Too bad one can't peer-review your claim. Also, you have little skin to lose if you bullshit, while the author(s) of TFA put their real name and career on the line.
Oh, yes, here we go down the "too sexy for my cat" path again.
If it doesn't worth your time to search and read it, how come you see bullshiting S/N as worthy?
The rational choice would be to abstain from both, but I'm not that naïve to expect a rational choice from you.
Guess what, buddy? If I need to choose between two conflicting claims, a non-peer-reviewed one and one that has been peer-reviewed, my experience tells me it's exceedingly rare for the first to be true and the second to be false.
I'll call bullshit on this one.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 23 2019, @12:26PM
And this is all we need to know to figure out how much value to attribute to your "opinion".
And here we have another perfect example of the anti-intellectual wave that's been plaguing society for the past few decades.