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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 "For every megawatt of electricity produced using natural gas instead of coal, the amount of water withdrawn from local rivers and groundwater is reduced by 10,500 gallons, the equivalent of a 100-day water supply for a typical American household," said Andrew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: 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.