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Planet-Profit Report, reporting on sustainable development in the Western United States.

The climate-water connection in the West

Scientists can see what's happening, and it isn't pretty

If the West wants to hang onto water for agriculture and for growing populations, it must give serious effort to integrating more wind, solar and other renewable energies into production of electricity, according to a new report, “Protecting the Lifeline of the West: How Climate and Clean Energy Policies Can Safeguard Water.”

Produced by Western Resource Advocates and the Environmental Defense Fund, the report also calls for water conservation, re-use and efficiency measures. The groups say a well-designed national climate policy that imposes a cap on emissions of carbon dioxide will provide incentives.

Released Monday, the report reflects a growing appreciation among businesses, water providers and environmental groups of the nexus between water, energy and climate. That nexus has emerged in sharp profile in the Colorado River Basin, which provides water for about 30 million people and tens of millions of irrigated acres. Drought had left Lake Powell and Mead only 55 percent full even as climate-change models more confidently predict a long-term decline of 10 percent to 20 percent in river flows.

“Unlike other regions, climate scientists are very clear about impacts to water in the West,” says Bart Miller, water program director at Western Resource Advocates. “Droughts of the past will become the norm of the future.”

Energy and water intersect in two key ways. Producing energy requires water for cooling. This is particularly true for coal-fired and nuclear power plants. For example, the new 750-megawatt coal-fired Comanche III power plant at Pueblo, Colo., will require a maximum delivery of 6,000 gallons per minute of water – despite using new hybrid cooling technology that also employs ambient air temperatures.

A 2008 study projected that demand for water needed to cool coal- and gas-fired power plants in the Rocky Mountain/Desert Southwest region will grow 224,110 acre-feet annually by the year 2030. That’s enough to meet needs of almost 2.5 million people.

“Western states are endowed with high-quality wind, solar, and geothermal resources,” notes the report. Some forms of concentrated solar, however, use nearly as much water as new-generation plants that burn fossil fuels.

Conversely, moving water and treating also requires energy. A report several years ago in California estimated about 20 percent of all energy there is used to move, treat or in some other way handle water. Some of that enormous energy use comes from pumping water southward from the Sacramento Delta to farmers around Bakersfield and then cities of Southern California. The Central Arizona Project ranks as Arizona’s top electricity consumer in pushing water from Lake Havasu to Phoenix, Tucson and farms along the way.

Other cities of the West are now looking at long-distance pumping. In Utah, for example, St. George, proposes to pump water more than 100 miles from Lake Powell. Several proposals have surfaced in Colorado to pump water up 300 miles to the Denver area. Most energy intense of all is desalinization.

The “Protecting the Lifeline” recommends expanding use of recycled water, as Tucson has done, and implanting energy-efficiency measures to cut both energy and water use in homes and businesses. The report also suggests that other states consider including the water consumption of various new power proposals. Tri-State Generation and Transmission, a wholesale provider to rural cooperatives in New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming, has begun doing so, as has Arizona Public Service.

But most of all, says Dan Grossman, Rocky Mountain regional director for the Environmental Defense Fund, states of the West and businesses need to consolidate support for federal legislation that effectively creates a lid on carbon – thus delivering incentives for renewables and efficiency measures.

Concerns about water scarcity have driven Intel, the computer chip manufacturer, to wring greater efficiencies in wafer-washing operations at its plant in Tucson, Ariz., reducing use from 7.5 million gallons per day down to 1.5 million gallons per day. Brewer Molson Coors, meanwhile, has been working with growers of hops to more adopt more efficient uses of water in irrigation in Colorado. Forestry products giant Weyerhaeuser, based in Washington state, has also been working to tamp down water use.