Premium
Spatially Allocating Life Cycle Water Use for US Coal‐Fired Electricity across Producers, Generators, and Consumers
Author(s) -
Meng Measrainsey,
Grubert Emily,
Peer Rebecca A. M.,
Sanders Kelly T.
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
energy technology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.91
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 2194-4296
pISSN - 2194-4288
DOI - 10.1002/ente.201901497
Subject(s) - coal , electricity , electricity generation , environmental science , water use , coal mining , water energy nexus , life cycle assessment , waste management , power station , environmental engineering , natural resource economics , production (economics) , engineering , power (physics) , economics , ecology , physics , electrical engineering , macroeconomics , quantum mechanics , nexus (standard) , biology , embedded system
There are water consequences across every life cycle stage of coal‐fired electricity consumption, from production and processing to combustion, which have not been studied with regional specificity. There is often a spatial decoupling between where coal is produced and processed versus where it is combusted for power generation, complicating any analysis to estimate the life cycle water implications of electricity consumption. Furthermore, electricity generated by coal‐fired power plants can be consumed within its own balancing authority or exported to another balancing authority. This analysis spatially resolves the water consumed and water withdrawn for coal mining, coal preparation, and power plant cooling from 1) where the coal is mined to where the coal is burned for power production and 2) where the electricity is generated to where the electricity is consumed. Although the largest portion of coal consumed came from the Northern Great Plains province, coal from this region consumes the least amount of water for mining and preparation compared with other provinces. Water withdrawals for cooling power plants within each balancing authority are driven by cooling technology. Due to the interconnected grid, there can be differences between attributing water footprint at the producer level versus the consumer level.