Direct and Indirect Water Withdrawals for U.S. Industrial Sectors

Abstract

Effective water management is critical for social welfare and ecosystem health. Nevertheless, information necessary to meaningfully assess sustainable water use is incomplete. In particular, little information is available on supply chain or indirect water use for the production of goods and services in the United States. We estimate a vector of water withdrawals for all 428 sectors in the 2002 U.S. economic input-output table. The vector was applied using economic input-output life cycle assessment (EIO-LCA) methods to estimate direct and indirect water withdrawals for each sector's production, both in terms of total withdrawals and per dollar of output. Agriculture and power generation account for an overwhelming majority of direct water withdrawals (90%). A majority of water use (60%) is indirect ("embodied" or "virtual" water) with 96% of the sectors using more water indirectly in their supply chains than directly. The food and beverage industry accounts for 30% of indirect withdrawals. These results can be useful for environmental life cycle assessment of U.S. production and other studies, especially to avoid truncation errors due to boundary setting associated with process based life cycle impact assessments. However, we conclude that better information on water use would be helpful for effective water management.

A Regional Analysis of the Life Cycle Environmental and Economic Tradeoffs of Different Economic Growth Paths

“…Furthermore, the eutrophication potential and water use of the agriculture industry are much higher than other industrial categories. This is consistent with previous results reported by [34], where the water demands of agricultural sectors per dollar of industrial output are the highest among all industries. As agriculture is often a fundamental element of a state's economy, it is desirable to invest in water efficient agricultural technologies and practices to reduce its impact on water resources per generated GDP.…”

“…Although LCAs have been widely applied in assessing technologies and systems, only a few applications have been made in comparing regional economic development paths to guide future planning and management [33][34][35][36][37][38]. The regional scale in this study is defined as a scale beneath the national level, but above the local or municipal scale [36].…”

Water Footprint of Cities: A Review and Suggestions for Future Research

“…Since its inception, it has become a standard economic tool and is primarily used in assessing employment impact from investments across sectors [78]. EEIO has been implemented at the single-region (SRIO) [79], inter-regional (IRIO) [80,81], and multi-regional (MRIO) [82,83] level.…”

Failure to Act

“…There is overlap in the water-intensive and water-dependent analyses presented (chemicals, beverages, food processing, but notably core industries of automobile manufacturing, biotechnology/pharmaceuticals and electronics are classified as among the most water dependent sectors in the U.S. economy. These are key industrial sectors of the national economy, and include: On the other hand, Blackhurst et al (2010) estimate water withdrawals for 426 sectors in the U.S. economy. They start with USGS data from 2000, and first disaggregate the public supply sector.…”

“…sourCe Blackhurst et al (2010) Supplemental Materials. Note: These estimates include self-supplied water and water purchased from private water and sewer systems, but do not include water purchased from government-owned systems.…”