Water conservation from power generation in China: A provincial level scenario towards 2030

Mingquan Li, Hancheng Dai, Yang Xie, Ye Tao, Lars Bregnbaek and Kaare Sandholt

Applied Energy, 2017, vol. 208, issue C, No S0306261917313764, 580-591

Abstract: Electric power generation poses a high stress to the water supply in China. In this study, we quantified China’s water consumption by electricity generation from 2015 to 2030 by considering different scenarios of electric power generation structure and water consumption intensity, and analyzed water consumption by different sources of electric power and its regional disparity. We found there is a significant difference in water consumption among the presented six scenarios with water consumption varying from 1.78 to 3.62 gigatonnes (Gt) in the year 2030. We also found that water consumption by coal-fired power decreases while water consumption by natural gas and nuclear power increases. Water consumption was and will still be concentrated in the three northern and coastal areas of China. However, the development of renewable power and adoption of water saving technology would contribute to water consumption reduction in these regions. We used a decomposition model for investigating the scale, structure and technology effects of electric power generation on water consumption, and found they present positive, negative and negative effects, respectively. The strongest factor in reducing water consumption is the technology effect, highlighting the importance of adopting water conserving cooling technology. Our findings yield important hints for China’s water conserving policy making in renewable power development, cooling technology choices and siting decisions.

Keywords: Electric power generation; Water consumption; Renewable power; Cooling technology; Decomposition analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261917313764
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:appene:v:208:y:2017:i:c:p:580-591

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2017.09.096

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().