Abstract
Water scarcity and uneven water demand in regional electricity generation pose substantial challenges to the sustainable development of water resources and electricity production in China. Based on the latest official policy of China’s electricity development, i.e., the 13th Five-Year Plan of electricity development, this study quantified annual water withdrawal and consumption for future electricity generation in China from 2015 to 2030. This study simulated a three-prong approach to impacting water use for electricity development, i.e., updating the cooling technology mix, increasing non-thermal power generation and relocating thermal power plants to the west. The results showed that solutions to relieve water stress caused by electricity production entail major trade-offs. Annual water withdrawal and consumption were projected to exceed 63.75 and 8.30 billion m3 by 2030, up approximately 14% and 21% of those in 2015, respectively, if China does not implement any new water and energy policies. Replacing once-through cooling systems with closed-loop cooling systems would decrease national water withdrawal remarkably but increase water consumption. The west-centered spatial distribution of thermoelectric power generation would reduce water use at the national level; however, it will largely increase water stress in northern and northwestern China. Thus, relieving the stress of growing electricity demand on water resources in China requires comprehensive measures and quantitative estimates.
Highlights
Water is an essential input in electricity generation
The main purpose of this study is to evaluate future water use for national and regional electricity generation under the latest official policy of China’s electricity development and to simulate different approach to impacting water use in electricity production
Wind power and solar PV power generation require negligible amounts of water during normal operation [31]. This study considered their water use factors to be zero, which is used in the previous studies of operational water use for electricity generation in China [20,36], the United States [6], the United Kingdom [5], India [16] and globally [15]
Summary
Water is an essential input in electricity generation. Cooling water is indispensable for generating electricity and normally constitutes the largest portion of industrial wastewater discharge [1,2]. The growing use of biofuels requires increasingly more irrigation water [4]. In the United Kingdom and the United States, the electricity sector accounts for approximately half of all water withdrawn for industrial use [5,6]. This interdependence between water and energy resources has been increasingly studied as the water–energy nexus, and has attracted much attention in recent years [7,8]
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