Abstract
Water, energy, and food are the most important basic resources for economic and social development. In the context of global population growth, environmental degradation, and resource shortages, the interrelationship between the water, energy, and food has become increasingly important. In this paper, the city of Ordos in China was selected as a study area. Firstly, this paper sorted out relevant research literature and fully understood the concept of water-energy-food (WEF) nexus. Then, an optimization model of WEF system was constructed based on interval number multi-objective programming, which took the comprehensive coordination deviation degree of the WEF system security and carbon dioxide emission minimization as the target. At the same time, the optimization model was constructed with full consideration of constraints such as economic benefit, water resource consumption, energy production, food production and environmental pollution emission. The results showed that the production of coal, thermal power, hydropower, wind power, and food all show an upward trend. Among them, the production of hydropower has the largest change, and the food production has the smallest change. In terms of water resource utilization, food production has the largest allocation of water resources accounting for nearly 80%, followed by coal production, thermal power generation and hydropower generation. The smallest allocation is natural gas. In particular, the allocation of water for coal production and hydroelectric power generation has increased significantly. Finally, the policy recommendations were put forward to promote the sustainable development of WEF system in Ordos. The optimization research on the WEF system can help to ensure the WEF system security in Ordos and promote the sustainable development of WEF system, which also can provide reference for other regions.
Highlights
Water, energy and food, as important resources to meet people’s basic living needs, play a vital role in social and economic development [1,2]
The optimization model was constructed with full consideration of constraints such as economic benefit, water resource consumption, energy production, food production and environmental pollution emission
In order to carry out the optimization research of the WEF system security in Ordos, this paper constructed an interval number multi-objective planning model, which took minimum WEF system security comprehensive coordination deviation and minimum carbon dioxide emissions as the goal, energy and food production and the allocation of water resources in energy and food production as decision variables
Summary
Energy and food, as important resources to meet people’s basic living needs, play a vital role in social and economic development [1,2]. Zhen et al [28] constrained a hybrid interval two-stage fuzzy credibility programming model for supporting energy-water nexus system management. Chen et al [29] proposed a dual risk aversion optimization method—an energy water nexus system model, which can generate robust optimization solutions. Karan [31] established a system and proposed a mathematical model for forecasting demand and production containing water, energy and food. Peng [34] optimized the relationship between water, energy and food basin by introducing the principle of synergetic According to the literature review, it can be observed that there is a lack of studies on the overall optimization of the region WEF. This paper took Ordos, an arid and water-deficient area of Inner Mongolia, as an example and conducted a study on the optimization of the WEF system security in Ordos.
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