Traditional energy production methods are, by and large, cooled by water, and place a massive burden on North America’s resources. Wind power, however, needs no such cooling and this is one of the reasons why it is being lined-up to play a stronger role in the energy mix. PES investigates.
The heat waves and drought that hit the United States in 2011 and 2012 shined a harsh light on the vulnerability of the U.S. electricity sector to extreme weather. During the historic 2011 drought in Texas, power plant operators trucked in water from miles away to keep the plants running, and disputes deepened between cities and utilities seeking to construct new water-intensive coal plants.
In 2012, heat and drought forced power plants, from the Gallatin coal plant in Tennessee to the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant on the Connecticut River, to reduce their output or shut down altogether. That summer, amid low water levels and soaring water temperatures, operators of other plants – at least seven coal and nuclear plants in the Midwest alone – received permission to discharge even hotter cooling water, to enable the plants to keep generating. These consecutive summers alone revealed water-related electricity risks across the country.
The power sector has historically placed large demands on both our air and water. In 2011, electricity generation accounted for one-third of U.S. heat trapping emissions, the drivers of climate change. Power plants also accounted for more than 40 percent of U.S. freshwater withdrawals in 2005, and are one of the largest ‘consumers’ of freshwater – losing water through evaporation during the cooling process – outside the agricultural sector.
The electricity system our nation built over the second half of the twentieth century helped fuel the growth of the U.S. economy and improve the quality of life of many Americans.
Yet we built that system before fully appreciating the reality and risks of climate change, and before converging pressures created the strain on local water resources we see today in many places. This system clearly cannot meet our needs in a future of growing demand for electricity, worsening strains on water resources, and an urgent need to mitigate climate change.
We can, however, use fuel and technology options available now to design an electricity future that begins to shed some of these risks. We can also expand our options by making strategic investments in energy and cooling technologies. The key is to understand what a low-carbon, ‘water-smart’ electricity future looks like – which electric sector decisions best prepare us to avoid and minimize energy-water collisions, and to cope with those we cannot avoid – and to make decisions that will set and keep us on that path.
