Water consumption and conservation assessment of the coal power industry in China

Abstract

As the largest industrial water consumer in China, the coal power industry faces extreme pressure to balance its expansion and water shortage. Introducing non-coal power to replace coal power is universal knowledge to reduce water consumption, but the water conservation efforts and effects of the coal power industry itself are usually neglected or underestimated. This work aims to bring attention to the importance of the coal power industry’s own water conservation through a case study of China. A bottom-up province-level inventory that focuses on power-cycle water consumption in 2016 was developed, and how self-improvement measures improve this inventory from 2016 to 2020 is evaluated. The results show dynamically varied provincial water consumption intensities of the coal power industry with 0.52–1.85 L/kWh in 2016, which are expected to decrease by 0.04–0.27 L/kWh with a country’s total water conservation potential of 645 million m3 by 2020 thanks to self-improvement measures. The water conservation potential is almost equal to that from introducing non-coal power at 676 million m3. The considerable water conservation of self-improvement makes its effect after 2020 promising in coal-dominant provinces with high water consumption intensities of the coal power industry while introducing non-coal power may be preferred in other provinces.