Operational water consumption and withdrawal factors for electricity generating technologies: a review of existing literature
By Jordan Macknick, R. Newmark, G. Heath, K. Hallett. 2012
603 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This report provides estimates of operational water withdrawal and water consumption factors for electricity generating technologies in the United States. Estimates of water factors were collected from published primary literature and were not modified except for unit conversions. The water factors presented may be useful in modeling and policy analyses where reliable power plant level data are not available. Major findings of the report include: water withdrawal and consumption factors vary greatly across and within fuel technologies, and water factors show greater agreement when organized according to cooling technologies as opposed to fuel technologies; a transition to a less carbon-intensive electricity sector could result in either an increase or a decrease in water use, depending on the choice of technologies and cooling systems employed; concentrating solar power technologies and coal facilities with carbon capture and sequestration capabilities have the highest water consumption values when using a recirculating cooling system; and non-thermal renewables, such as photovoltaics and wind, have the lowest water consumption factors. Improved power plant data and further studies into the water requirements of energy technologies in different climatic regions would facilitate greater resolution in analyses of water impacts of future energy and economic scenarios. This report provides the foundation for conducting water use impact assessments of the power sector while also identifying gaps in data that could guide future research.
Subfields: Environmental Engineering, Pollution, Water Science and Technology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/64e85357d312fd676ee7b3be84b56fb52104810a
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Citations in the corpus
- A retrospective analysis of benefits and impacts of U.S. renewable portfolio standards (2016, methodology): “28 power plant water use (Macknick et al. 2012b).”
- Real-time economic dispatch for the supply side of the energy-water nexus (2014, background): “Similarly, research is underway to improve technologies that would diminish this impact [22,23].”
- Life cycle water use for electricity generation: a review and harmonization of literature estimates (2013, methodology): “…use factors vary substantially by cooling technology, with open loop cooling (also known as once-through cooling) requiring much greater withdrawals and recirculating cooling towers consuming relatively more water, as shown in table 2 and described in more detail elsewhere (Macknick et al 2012).”
- China's energy-water nexus – assessment of the energy sector's compliance with the “3 Red Lines” industrial water policy (2015, background): “However, Macknick et al. (2012) stress that state agencies often do not use consistent methods or definitions in measuring water use by the energy sector.”
- The water implications of generating electricity: water use across the United States based on different electricity pathways through 2050 (2012, methodology): “We aggregate fuel and cooling type technologies from existing plants to match ReEDS technologies along with fuel and cooling system categories discussed in Macknick et al (2012).”