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 "For every megawatt of electricity produced using natural gas instead of coal, the amount of water withdrawn from local rivers and groundwater is reduced by 10,500 gallons, the equivalent of a 100-day water supply for a typical American household," said Andrew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