Great Lakes Commission Report on Water-Energy Nexus

The Great Lakes Commission, an interstate compact agency that promotes the orderly, integrated and comprehensive development, use and conservation of the water and related natural resources of the Great Lakes basin and St. Lawrence River, has released a new report on the implications of the water-energy nexus for the Great Lakes region.

Last month we blogged about how the Great Lakes Commission is addressing the water-energy nexus. Little did I know that they had released a report on the subject in April 2009.

The report is called The Energy-Water Nexus: Implications for the Great Lakes (PDF). The authors provide a good overview of the water-energy nexus at the national level before explaining what it means for the Great Lakes. The overview begins by looking at the energy required for water supply and treatment across the U.S., but fails to go into much detail on the energy embedded in water in the Great Lakes region. This is completely understandable and most likely due to the dearth of regional data on water-related energy use. The vast majority of the report is devoted to the water demands of power production, including a lot of useful information and analysis on water for energy in the Great Lakes region.

Here's the report's analysis of future water and energy needs for the Great Lakes:

Future demographic and economic growth will necessitate vast amounts of additional energy and water to respond to population needs. Power generation will grow to meet rising electricity demand, especially from the residential and commercial sectors. Nationwide, U.S. electricity demand is expected to rise by about 29 percent by 2030, most of which will be produced by coal-fired power plants. In the five U.S. electricity market regions that cover the Great Lakes area (ECAR, MAAC, MAIN, MAAP and NY) (Figure 5), the Energy Information Agency’s 2008 reference case projects over 18 GW of additional power generation capacity by 2030. Moreover, Quebec and Ontario are expected to increase their generating capacity by as much as 43 GW by 2020, most of which (35 GW) will come from Ontario and is expected to be from natural gas fired plants. These projections do not consider potential significant increases in electricity demand from a shift in transportation technology to electric vehicles.

Water for public water supply by itself will consume a good portion of that energy. In 2005, nationwide total electricity consumption for public water supply was about 32 billion kWh. This is expected to reach about 36 billion kWh by the year 2020 and 46 billion kWh by the year 2050. Table 1 shows projected consumption for different categories of water uses in the East North Central region and the Middle Atlantic region. Combined, these two regions encompass 7 of the 10 states and provinces of the Great Lakes region and can therefore illustrate the scale of the expected growth. As Table 1 shows, an additional 3 billion kWh will be needed just to supply, treat and deliver water across these two regions in 2050.Thermoelectric power generation has been a significant part of the region’s energy portfolio. The thermoelectric power generation sector will remain a considerable water consumer for the foreseeable future. In the U.S, thermoelectric generating capacity is expected to increase by nearly 18 percent between 2005 and 2030. During that same period, water withdrawals are projected to decline slightly as new power plants comply with the requirements of the less water-intensive closed-loop technology, although the total amount of water withdrawals will still be huge—on the order of 112 to 154 billion gallons per day. In the face of growing competition for water resources, regional and national efforts to reduce water withdrawal and consumption for thermoelectric power plants are expected to intensify. Freshwater consumption is estimated to increase between 31 to 49 percent between 2005 and 2030 to operate the 124 GW of new U.S. thermoelectric generating capacity projected for 2030.

Download: The Energy-Water Nexus: Implications for the Great Lakes (PDF)