We’ll be facing a sever global water crisis in less than 30 years we do not reduce water-intensive electricity production, which will cause widespread drought according to new research.
Two new reports that focus on the global electricity water nexus have just been published. Three years of research show that by the year 2040 there will not be enough water in the world to quench the thirst of the world population and keep the current energy and power solutions going if we continue doing what we are doing today. It is a clash of competing necessities, between drinking water and energy demand. Behind the research is a group of researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark, Vermont Law School and CNA Corporation in the US.
Eventually in a world of limited water supplies we’ll have to choose what to do with it. – “Do we want to spend it on keeping the power plants going or as drinking water? We don’t have enough water to do both,” said Bejamin Sovacool, director of the Center for Energy Technology at Aarhus University in reference to the dual reports released Tuesday.
But there are some things we can do to make better use of the water that is available, the report says. In the reports, the researchers stresses on six general recommendations for decision and policy makers to implement in order to stop arrest the problem and handle the crisis around the world:
- Improve energy efficiency
- Better research on alternative cooling cycles
- Registering how much water power plants use
- Massive investments in wind energy
- Massive investments in solar energy
- Abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water stressed places (which means half the planet)
More information about the research and links to the reports: http://www.cna.org/ewc