BY KATRINA HAMLIN
The landmark Paris climate agreement that some 150 world leaders will formally sign on Earth Day on Friday is missing a crucial ingredient: water. The December draft didn’t mention H2O once. But the world’s dirtiest industries are also the thirstiest. Efforts to cut their carbon would work best with wiser water regulation.
Energy companies would make an obvious target for such a two-pronged attack. Power generation guzzles around 15 percent of annual global freshwater withdrawals. Demand for electricity is expected to grow as much as 70 percent by 2035, which would require a 20 percent increase in freshwater withdrawals, according to the United Nations.
Fossil fuels such as coal and gas look particularly vulnerable. Electricity from coal plants and natural gas is exceptionally water intensive, and the biggest burners – including China, India and the United States – already face serious water shortages. The world’s coal-fired plants use around 19 billion cubic metres of freshwater each year, enough water to sustain around a billion people; 44 percent of those facilities are in water-stressed regions, according to Greenpeace.
Renewable energy is, on the other hand, relatively efficient. Photovoltaic solar (PV) panels consume as little as a tenth of the water required by coal to produce one megawatt-hour of electricity, according to a U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory study. Wind farms need even less, and sometimes none at all. Granted, there are exceptions – nuclear and some concentrated solar power systems are guzzlers; manufacturing the hardware used for PV and wind also requires water. But all in all, there is a convenient relationship between reducing carbon emissions and improving water efficiency.
Policymakers are starting to see water as part of the solution to climate change. Around 300 representatives of international organizations, governments and water-related institutions signed a “Paris Pact” on water and adaptation to climate change on the sidelines of the December summit.
Major players including China, though, are not signatories. And the pact itself – a surprisingly succinct two-page manifesto – only addresses managing the impact of climate change on water basins, rather than leveraging water to support the struggle against emissions.
It’s too late to just add water to the Paris Agreement: but policymakers may yet learn to use H2O against CO2. The dirtiest and thirstiest energy producers should brace for a water fight.
First published April 22, 2016
IMAGE: REUTERS/Stephane Mahe