Water and Energy Use: Contentious Interconnections

                Water is a crucial element to life on Earth.  As our quality of life improves, water is furtively becoming more and more important and in many ways becoming a shrinking resource in the same manner as fossil fuels.  At the superficial level as population grows so does the demand for irrigation and drinking water.  Increased population growth also bears the consequence of greater electricity demand which in turn elevates demand for water to be used in energy production.  Further, tightening resources are often accompanied by elevating conflicts.  UNICEF estimates that roughly 3 million people die a year from water sanitation issues and that around one in six people lack access to clean drinking water.  As a result, water is developing into a larger international concern not only to meet citizen demand but as an issue of conflict resolution and cooperation.  The following figure demonstrates the constricting issue of water availability on a global context.

                The relationship between water and energy is complex and unfortunately not well-studied.  Currently, the Department of Energy is working through Sandia National Laboratories to develop a method of estimating the interconnections between water and energy usage and overall sustainability.  As Dr. Webber points out in “Catch 22: Water vs. Energy,” a lack of a regulatory body over water use is troubling.  Without an authoritative agency, local governments will be mired in arguments over water rights in areas where multiple cities pump water out of communal reserves.  Also, due to shifts in populations to less water-rich locations, the energy sector will be forced to accommodate longer shipping distances which will lead to increased electricity production and consequently more greenhouse gas emissions.  Finally, the relationship between renewable energy and water use is often parasitic rather than synergistic.  For example, water requirements for ethanol, hydrogen, plug-in-hybrids, and gasoline vehicles are 130-6200, 42, 24, and 7-14 gallons of water per 100 miles traveled.  These numbers indicate that water intensity of technologies should perhaps be a more important measure when comparing technologies.  In total, for the reasons mentioned here and a multitude of others, policy and regulatory agencies for water use need to be created and integrated with energy policy to develop a comprehensive view of sustainability.

                Fresh water use in the United States is dominated by irrigation.  Irrigation use accounts for 81% of fresh-water use while domestic demand comes in a distant second at 7%.  However, water use in electricity production nearly equals irrigation in water withdrawal (water from electricity production can be returned to the source leading to a low consumption rate).  Total water use for energy production was estimated by DOE/NETL at 6.2 billion gallons per day in 2005; therefore, water conservation is key to energy sustainability.  As a quantitative comparison, gas/steam combined cycle, coal and oil, and nuclear production of electricity require 7,400-20,000, 21,000-50,000, and 25,000-60,000 gallons of water to generate one Megawatt-hour of electricity, respectively.  Further, energy required delivering one million clean gallons of water from a lake or river, groundwater, wastewater, or seawater is 1,400, 18,000, 2,350-3,300, and 9,780-16,500 kilowatt-hours, respectively.  In light of these values, it is obvious that technology type can significantly affect conservation strategies and impact our energy portfolio.

                A final issue regarding water and energy coupling is the cyclical nature of the problem.  To obtain clean water we must invest energy to separate contaminants.  To produce electricity we require clean water to prevent scaling and fouling issues which can destroy our energy producing equipment.  Finally, once we are done using the clean water for energy production, the resulting water is left in a degraded form of the clean feed and requires processing.  As a fortunate consequence, any technological change affecting water use will have a two-fold effect due to the coupled nature of the processes.  However, any change made to energy policy without consideration to water use will directly cause problems to water production which will in turn trickle down to the energy sector. 

                In a similar way to energy, the solution to water conservation will likely come from a myriad of technologies as well as behavioral adaptation.  On a small scale, residents have several options for reducing fresh-water demand including grey-water systems, rain-water collection systems, distribution technologies such as drip hoses, and behavioral modifications.  On a larger scale, many developing technologies such as water extraction from flue gas, air coolers instead of evaporative coolers, more efficient water treatment facilities using zero-valent iron, and drip irrigation systems are being developed and tested.  While it is uncertain what impact each of these technologies will have, the best we may be able to do at the present is to shave a few percentage points off of our water use.  Further, the above mentioned technologies can become money sinks and eye-sores to some.

                Overall, it should be apparent that water and energy are intimately coupled both in production and necessity.  Though society could survive without produced electricity, water is an essential element to life.  Despite our need for water, a regulatory body for water use doesn’t currently exist in the U.S. and legislation is currently monopolized by water quality standards.  Water as a shrinking resource is often overlooked due to its renewable nature; however, we know that renewable doesn’t mean sustainable; therefore, water conservation and use strategies need to be viewed in the same, “the sky falling,” nature of fossil fuels.  Unfortunately for fossil fuels, the industry developed at a faster pace than globalizing regulation.  Fortunately for water use, the current lack of significant international legislation provides a blank canvas for cooperative law-making.  Governance over water supply should learn from the blunders of the petroleum trade and develop international agreements before supply becomes too scarce.  Perhaps the biggest way to enact some form of conservation may be to re-think water pricing in view of electricity demand fluctuation in a broader sense than purely operational cost and to individually meter water use on all levels.  This strategy may be viewed as “market meddling” but pricing is an effective policy lever; sometimes the only way to a person’s head is through their wallet.  It may be best to conserve with foresight than to face similar problems we have now with oil.

DOE/NETL.  IEP – Water-Energy Interface: Power Plant Water Management.  Available at http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/ewr/water/power-gen.html .  Accessed March 22, 2010.

Feeley III TJ, Green L, McNemar A, Carney BA, Pletcher S.  Department of Energy/Office of Fossil Energy’s Water-Energy Interface Research Program.  April, 2006.

US Department of Energy.  Energy Demands on Water Resources: Report to Congress on the Interdependency of Energy and Water. December, 2006.

Webber ME.  Catch 22: Water vs. Energy.  Scientific American Earth 3.0 (Special Edition). 2008.

World Water Council.  Water Crisis.  2005.  Available at http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=25 .  Accessed March 22, 2010.

Carbon Taxes and Cap-and-Trade: Where Do Sports Fit In?

Over the past decade, fervent debate, a multitude of legislation, and global summits have centered on climate change.  Many bills such as H.R. 2454, or the “American Clean Energy and Security Act,” and S. 1733, or the “Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act,” have laid the ground work for gradual restrictions on greenhouse gases and the transitioning of the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels to more environmentally acceptable energy sources.  While several methods to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are being considered, the most common policies are carbon taxes and the cap-and-trade system.  The central idea of emission reducing modes is to create ceilings for the production of environmentally harmful substances, specifically carbon dioxide, and to enforce penalties for exceeding the set limits.  Though the carbon taxing system is more generally applied and is therefore less-prone to manipulations by special-interest and other lobbying groups, it is significantly more restrictive in nature and thus less attractive than the cap-and-trade system, although both systems are highly scrutinized in the United States.

Since the majority of current legislation revolves around the cap-and-trade system, I wanted to learn precisely who would be regulated under such a policy.  As expected, the main focus for emission cuts include electricity producers, oil refineries, steel manufacturers, concrete producers, and many other companies that fall under the umbrella of “industry”.  The other somewhat unexpected area covered by the proposed system includes delivery services or companies that have significant distribution fleets.  Though the overall scope of these bills is to reduce the national levels of greenhouse gas emissions, their level of detail extends even to local, small producers and distributors.  At first glance these rather lengthy bills seem to be fairly all-inclusive, but it seems that little attention is given to recreational emissions.  While it is certain that transportation, including airlines, will be regulated in some way, there is little to no mention of treatment of recreation based emitters.

As a case study, I decided to do a rough estimation of the carbon dioxide emissions from NASCAR in a given year and to compare their output to regulated entities.  The analysis performed calculated carbon dioxide emissions for the three racing series covered under NASCAR: the Sprint Cup Series, the Nationwide Series, and the Camping World Trucks Series.  All necessary information was found using NASCAR’s website, which included racing mileage, stadium seating, and racer roster.  Any assumption made was taken as conservative as possible, and in some cases on the extreme low-end.  Assumptions made include 4.5 MPG for race cars, 27.5 MPG for fans with 3 passengers per car, fan travel distance of 100 miles, and 20 lbs CO₂/gal gasoline for both race cars and fan vehicles.  Fan attendance included a high and low value corresponding to 150% of seating (estimates in-field seating which can be up to four times the stadium seating) and 75% of seating to simulate lower attendance due to depressed economy.

The emissions of carbon dioxide for racers and fans plus racers for the high attendance assumption were calculated to be 4.74 million pounds and 6.17 billion pounds per year, respectively.  The low level attendance emissions were found to be 6.09 billion pounds per year.  The previous values correspond to 0.0413% and 0.0408% of U.S. CO₂ emissions accordingly. 

A direct comparison of NASCAR emissions can be made to a highly regulated industry such as refineries.  149 refineries in the United States produce roughly 277 million pounds of CO2 per year.  Therefore, annual carbon dioxide emissions for NASCAR correspond to approximately 3 average refineries.

While these values incorporate a number of assumptions, great care was taken to use only reported numbers.  Any non-reported values were estimated as conservatively as possible.  Therefore, the reported values should be accurate within an order of magnitude, especially since stadium lighting, racer transportation, and tire consumption were neglected.  I would like to conclude that, since the magnitude of output from racing emissions are approximately equivalent to a highly regulated industry, NASCAR CO₂ emissions should also be regulated.

Though NASCAR lends itself easily to calculation, I would assume that other sports emit similar amounts of carbon dioxide due to stadium lighting, fan attendance, and event amenities.  The problem with implementing restrictions is how to evenly distribute the imposed burden.  Carbon taxing would apply directly to NASCAR due to fuel consumption, whereas the electricity burden for stadiums would be absorbed by electricity producers.  For cap-and-trade to be employed all recreational organizations should be included; however, the issue of stadium location would be problematic.  Most NASCAR stadium are located farther away from population centers than stadiums, therefore their corresponding burden would be greater than other sports.  In an effort of fairness, perhaps the most appropriate method is a combination of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade where most directly applicable.

The purpose of this analysis was to show that carbon dioxide emissions for recreational organizations should be regulated in the same manner as other industries since their emissions contribute similar amounts.  Creating policy to restrict sports emissions may require unique methods to incorporate fairness of application.

Sources:

www.nascar.com

http://sports.yahoo.com/nascar/news?slug=jb-economy061908

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/Feg/co2.shtml

http://www.bts.gov/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_04_23.html

http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/007/oil-refineries-targeted-for-global-warming-emissions-cuts.html

http://www.emagazine.com/view/?2947&printview

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-06-03-waxman-markey-bill-breakdown/

http://www.grist.org/article/2009-10-23-kerry-boxer-clean-energy-bill-chairmans-mark-and-epa-analysis/