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 "For every megawatt of electricity produced using natural gas instead of coal, the amount of water withdrawn from local rivers and groundwater is reduced by 10,500 gallons, the equivalent of a 100-day water supply for a typical American household," said Andrew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