Modeling Climate-Water Impacts on Electricity Sector Capacity Expansion

Abstract

Climate change has the potential to exacerbate water availability concerns for thermal power plant cooling, which is responsible for 41% of U.S. water withdrawals. This analysis describes an initial link between climate, water, and electricity systems using the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS) electricity system capacity expansion model. Average surface water projections from Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 (CMIP3) data are applied to surface water rights available to new generating capacity in ReEDS, and electric sector growth is compared with and without climate-influenced water rights. The mean climate projection has only a small impact on national or regional capacity growth and water use because most regions have sufficient unappropriated or previously retired water rights to offset climate impacts. Climate impacts are notable in southwestern states, which experience reduced water rights purchases and a greater share of rights acquired from wastewater and other higher-cost water resources. The electric sector climate impacts demonstrated herein establish a methodology to be later exercised with more extreme climate scenarios and a more rigorous representation of legal and physical water availability.

Cooling water for Britain's future electricity supply

“…Due to concerns over security of electricity supply, in the last few years there has been a number of studies evaluating the use of freshwater for cooling at power stations. Some studies seek to determine whether high temperatures and reducing river flows due to climate change present risks to thermoelectric power production, usually at a river basin scale (Cohen et al, 2014;Förster and Lilliestam, 2009;Vögele, 2009, 2013;Koch et al, 2014;Naughton et al, 2012;Scanlon et al, 2013;Stillwell and Webber, 2013;Stillwell et al, 2011). Others have quantified current and future freshwater demands from different energy pathways, such as for the USA (Macknick et al, 2012b), the UK (Byers et al, 2014;Hall et al, 2015;Tran et al, 2014), China (Pan et al, 2012) or the whole world (Hadian and Madani, 2013).…”

A spatially detailed blue water footprint of the United States economy

“…In the eastern US, exposure to drought, or other system shocks, presents in southern Texas, southern Florida, the Chicago area, and the Lower Mississippi Valley. Because the whole US, and world, depend on these water supplies, these locations should be a priority for national water policy (Cooley and Gleick, 2012;Gleick et al, 2012), for public investment in water infrastructure to manage drought (Brown and Lall, 2006;Galloway Jr., 2011), and for innovative green infrastructure and market-based solutions that address water supply and demand problems. Additionally, the ports through which virtual water flows create transportation risks posed by war, strikes, tropical storms, earthquakes, and sea level rise.…”

Optimal Planning of Electric Power Systems

“…In [61], an extreme weather stochastic model is applied to a realistic cascading failure simulator of power grids, accounting for the operating conditions that a repair crew may encounter during an extreme weather event. The impacts of water availability on the generation capacity expansion planning is investigated in [62] under different scenarios of water rights [63]. Proposes an integrated electricity and natural gas planning model taking into consideration the power grid resilience against storms, earthquakes and floods [64].…”