Electric Vehicles: Good For Climate, Bad For Water?
by Andrew Posner, Providence, Rhode Island 
on 03.11.08
Here at Treehugger and throughout the environmental community there is a strong sense that electric vehicles, be they plug-in hybrids or pure ev's, are the wave of the future. And companies such as Tesla Motors, GM and Aptera, as well as the state of Israel, have put their money, reputations and time behind electric cars as a way of dealing with climate change. They have done so with good reason: electric cars are undoubtedly more efficient than their internal combustion brethren, and therefore result in fewer emissions of greenhouse gases. However, a report to be released in the Journal of Environmental Science and Technology argues that electric cars "might dangerously strain already scarce water reserves."
In a rather poorly written article on Yahoo! news, the author explains that "hybrid and fully electric cars rely in part on water. Specifically, the power plants that produce the electricity typically use water primarily to cool down the systems." Ignoring the fact that hybrids don't pull any electricity off the grid (the author probably meant plug-in hybrids), it is indeed true that it takes a lot of water to make electricity. In fact, according to government statistics provided by nationalatlas.gov
Thermoelectric power accounts for about half of total water withdrawals. Most of the water is derived from surface water and used for once-through cooling at power plants. About 52 percent of fresh surface-water withdrawals and about 96 percent of saline-water withdrawals are for thermoelectric-power use.
The connection between energy and water consumption is a fascinating, and poorly understood, phenomenon. The Yahoo article points out that each mile driven on electricity will require "roughly three times more water than gasoline." But hold on! Before we kill the electric car (again), let's remember a few things. For one, biofuels currently require far more water in the growing and refining process (up to 100 times) than do fossil fuels. The switch to biofuels also raises numerous food and land-use issues, and may not even have climate benefits.
Secondly, electric vehicles only use more water if they get their electricity from coal fired plants. With all three of the presidential candidates in favor of strong climate legislation, carbon dioxide now considered a pollutant under the clean air act, and the global community looking to the U.S. for leadership, it's highly likely our grid will be getting a lot greener very soon. As it is, wind farms and large solar concentrating plants are springing up all over the country. And as the grid gets greener, so too do electric vehicles.
Finally, the beauty of electric vehicles is that it is so much easier to produce green electrons than it is to produce green gallons of liquid fuel. And the more green electrons we produce the less water our power plants will need for cooling, the less impacts we'll have from climate change, and the less air pollution we'll have in our cities.
So yes, it takes water to produce electricity. Lots of it. But that's not the bottom line when it comes to electric vehicles. They start to look a whole lot better when seen as part of a suite of policies and actions addressing both water and climate.
Via: ::Yahoo News
See Also: ::Ambitious Solar Plan Could Provide EU with a Sixth of its Energy Needs, ::EV1 Electric car: Did it Suck or Not? and ::Are Electric Vehicle Charging Station on the Way?
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While it is true that power plants "use" water, they do not "use it up". The water is only used for cooling and then returned to the river or lake it was taken from, at a slightly higher temperature, and perfectly fit to be used again.
Excellent point. Power plants do return the water, however because the water is return at a high temperature, it can harm aquatic life. Additionally, much of the water is lost to evaporation during the entire process.
Water is a major issue in terms of providing for a transport energy that excludes gasoline. For example, the rush to biofuels has huge consequences for water.
Dr. Bill Simpkins, Professor of Hydrogeology in the Department of Geological and Atmospheric Sciences at Iowa State University, argues that impact of biofuel production on water quality and demand has yet to be incorporated into economic models. The added costs may make biofuels economically unviable. (Podcast to be published Mar 31: Biofuels podcast)
Water may evaporate, but it will still fall as rain sooner or later. I agree with this article. If we would stop relying on coal, then everything would be greener, even our water usage.
You might be confused what the danger of water used for cooling is.
The biggest one, that I know of, is that as water temperature rises less gas can dissolve into the water. On a small scale of power plants, that means fishes without enough oxygen. On the world climate scale of global warming that means co2 bubbling out from oceans.
Now, I'm still vastly in favor electric cars, because, we can have clean electricity.
Cars are big, heavy things that move about quickly. They'll always be some sort of impact down the line.
The author of the original article seems pretty ignorant of basic water resource management principles anda over generalizes to an absurd level. I don't have the time to fully deconstruct but here are a few key points, one of which other commenters have already hit on.
Power plants uktilize several kinds of cooling apparatus. The so-called "Dry" or air cooled systems are more expensive, but they do exist in high desert sites. TreeHugger has posted on them twoice. Then there is the "pass through" water cooled version that is referred to above. This is a "non-consumptive" use. Only a very small percentage increases in evaporation rate results. For small "merchant power" or "peaking power" plants there are indeed fully consumptive evaporative cooling towers. To lump all these together in one generalization is absurd. Secondly, as I say this is non-consumptive and just flat wrong.
Agriculture is the single largest consumptive user of water. Evapotranspiration from crop land rates vary greatly but 30 to 70% is a reasonable range to start with. Return flows from irrigation are often saline and highly polluted with nitrates and pesiticdes.
The original article does not pass muster and should never have been published. I seriously doubt it was peer reviewed.
One Arizona legislator was concerned that blind people might not hear electric cars because they were so quiet.
Sustainable fuels and sustainable cars are desirable, but we are going to have to change our way of life. We'll have to have more compact livable/walkable urban areas, more mass transit. But simply replacing fossil fuel powered cars with electrics or alt fuels doesn't solve the problem of congestion or road construction.
Please stop helping the automobile in their greenwashing efforts.
While they are busy parading hybrid and electric cars around at car shows, they are fighting tooth and nail regulations to mandate increased fuel economy. If they thought electrics and hybrids were a solution they would not be fighting these regulations.
Private automobiles require huge amounts of resources and land for their construction, maintenance, parking and operation.
Hybrids and electrics are the low tar and light cigarettes of the automobile industry. They are simply PR tools to distract the public from the real measures that are needed to transform our transportation system to one that effectively moves people and is sustainable.
The future is high-speed rail, public transit and cycling.
You forgot the worst thing about electric vehicles, the process required to mine the materials used in the manufacture of the huge battery packs is horrible for the environment, and what about disposal?
Did everyone forget that gasoline doesn't perk up from the ground. After the oil is gotten from the ground and shipped to the refinery, they use a HUGE amount of electricity to turn that basic commodity into the various fuel & oil products that they eventually gouge us to buy. So, if you consider the amount of electricity used, lets not forget that a vast amount of electricity is used to make gasoline.
Water isn't "used up." It's used, and remains H2O in one form or another. It's not like oil. It can be reused over and over. Water is the most abundant resource on the planet. But if we choose to use our energy to make plasma televisions and McDonald's hamburgers, then yes, you may very well fall short of affordable drinking water. But, hey, if this isn't an argument for overpopulation, I don't know what is. Maybe it ends the argument all together, for that matter.
1] currently market hybrid are not plug-in (one day will be)
2] pge has solar program to move California into a solar state. the environmental resources required to make a solar panel will be greatly balanced in a only a couple years. (i'm not talking about the roi of the panel)
3] does it factor in the minimized maintenance costs of owning a hybrid or electric cars? shouldn't that be considered in its environmental/water usage?
does anyone know of study that compared water usage required to produce gasoline to move a vehicle VS. water usage required to produce electricity to move a vehicle?
OIL VS. ELECTRIC WATER USAGE?
something tell me electricity would be much less. anyone have a study?
What I liked the most about this article is Andrew's explanation of the water uses on each production mechanism. Wonder if it can be translated to a diagram, it'd make for a nice guideline.
.............. PLEASE don't keep giving the Republicans fuel for their SPIN machines, they will surely ignore the fact that with using solar, wind, hydro and other renewables the electric car will HAVE NO IMPACT ON WATER.........
Treehugger.... careful on what you propigate.....
..... otherwise you guys ROCK!
If using fresh water is the problam then why not build power plants closer to the ocean and use salt water for cooling. Or use pipes leading from the ocean to the plant. If that's not an option, there are always obituaries from witch to collect fresh water, although, that should be kept as a last resort if at all possable.
While posters like Richard Campbell are right, that the environmental impact of cars extend well beyond the fuel they burn and spew into our atmosphere, I'm astonished to find that noone even stops to consider the enormous number of people killed by cars. I don't mean by their emissions, or even indirectly by increasing your chances of heart disease. I mean killed in car crashes.
Auto collisions kill more people than murder and wars put together. The number one way to die by accident is on the road, roughly four times the number of people die this way than the next most popular type of accident. And putting airbags in cars only mitigates half of the problem, because the other half of these deaths are pedestrians.
It never ceases to amaze me how there's a huge uproar in the news about how many people die at the end of a gun, yet fatal car crashes barely get a footnote on the morning traffic report.
imac said:
You forgot the worst thing about electric vehicles, the process required to mine the materials used in the manufacture of the huge battery packs is horrible for the environment, and what about disposal?
I think YOU forgot to do some research and read on that subject. Do so please.
If you all think that switching to plug-in hybrid electric vehicles is a difficult task, just wait until you try to get land use and development policies changed to encourage the use of mass transit and human powered transportation (walking/biking). Plug-in hybrids will be a breeze compared to that. The population of automobiles in the US does turn over on a reasonably short time frame. Development simply is. And the great majority of development we've seen in the US is automobile centered.
I have lived in cities most of my life. I think medium to high density, transit oriented development is one of the main solutions to our transportation energy use problems. But it's a solution that will take many decades to have a real impact. We need to push it. But we also have to plan for greener automobile transportation for many more decades.
As others have noted, this looks like one more attempt to maintain the status quo by companies who are seriously afraid of change. Gee, I wonder who would fear a transition from an oil based transportation system to one based on electricity? Probably the same parties who fear a transition to a biofuel based transportation system: the oil companies.
Often this 'waste' heat can be used by other industrial processes that would otherwise require fossil fuels to be burned. It's called cogeneration. As an example, you could have a power plant uptake salt water, evaporate it (thus cooling the cold side of the power plant's heat engine), and collect the condensing water, which at this point would be desalinated. You'd also get salt as a byproduct, which would otherwise be mined from reserves in the earth.
Our concern is that electric cars will require additional power from our power grid (a degree to which is still being debated) and therefore, depending on the power source, warm the water supply and cause problems for wildlife and such.
Isn't this already happening now? How much more are electric cars going to add to a problem that already exists from our current electricity use?
What is seems like they are saying is that electric cars might make this problem worse. Indeed, it might. Compared to the current global problems caused from oil, it seems like a very small chance to take.
I think if you were to use salt water to cool steam turbines the cost of the cooling system would be very high.
the presidential candidates do NOT have strong climate change proposals. they have weak proposals that merit praise for being a step in the right direction, but are a tiny piece of the fundamental changes we need to make yesterday.
It is the silliness and desperation of those resistant to change who inspire articles like these. Anything bad for water is also bad for the climate.
Disinformation and scare tactics are ways to be "controversial" not ways to be helpful.
Really it is electricity from coal fired plants that is a problem, not the end use of electricity, be it in cars or can-openers.
The problem of coal fired power is a situation needing addressed, but it must have workable, efficient, cost effective methods of mitigating the harmful problems. Other fossil fuel use is also a problem needing a solution.
Ideally, at some point (preferably sooner than later) we can phase out all forms of fossil fuel use.