IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v6y2014i10p7155-7180d41241.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scenario-Based Analysis on Water Resources Implication of Coal Power in Western China

Author

Listed:
  • Jiahai Yuan

    (School of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University, Chang Ping District, Beijing 102206, China)

  • Qi Lei

    (School of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University, Chang Ping District, Beijing 102206, China)

  • Minpeng Xiong

    (School of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University, Chang Ping District, Beijing 102206, China)

  • Jingsheng Guo

    (School of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University, Chang Ping District, Beijing 102206, China)

  • Changhong Zhao

    (School of Economics and Management, North China Electric Power University, Chang Ping District, Beijing 102206, China)

Abstract

Currently, 58% of coal-fired power generation capacity is located in eastern China, where the demand for electricity is strong. Serious air pollution in China, in eastern regions in particular, has compelled the Chinese government to impose a ban on the new construction of pulverized coal power plants in eastern regions. Meanwhile, rapid economic growth is thirsty for electric power supply. As a response, China planned to build large-scale coal power bases in six western provinces, including Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Xinjiang, Ningxia and Gansu. In this paper, the water resource implication of the coal power base planning is addressed. We find that, in a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, water consumption for coal power generation in these six provinces will increase from 1130 million m 3 in 2012 to 2085 million m 3 in 2020, experiencing nearly a double growth. Such a surge will exert great pressure on water supply and lead to serious water crisis in these already water-starved regions. A strong implication is that the Chinese Government must add water resource constraint as a critical point in its overall sustainable development plan, in addition to energy supply and environment protection. An integrated energy-water resource plan with regionalized environmental carrying capacity as constraints should be developed to settle this puzzle. Several measures are proposed to cope with it, including downsizing coal power in western regions, raising the technical threshold of new coal power plants and implementing retrofitting to the inefficient cooling system, and reengineering the generation process to waterless or recycled means.

Suggested Citation

  • Jiahai Yuan & Qi Lei & Minpeng Xiong & Jingsheng Guo & Changhong Zhao, 2014. "Scenario-Based Analysis on Water Resources Implication of Coal Power in Western China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 6(10), pages 1-26, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:10:p:7155-7180:d:41241
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/10/7155/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/6/10/7155/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Koch, Hagen & Vögele, Stefan, 2009. "Dynamic modelling of water demand, water availability and adaptation strategies for power plants to global change," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2031-2039, May.
    2. Bazilian, Morgan & Rogner, Holger & Howells, Mark & Hermann, Sebastian & Arent, Douglas & Gielen, Dolf & Steduto, Pasquale & Mueller, Alexander & Komor, Paul & Tol, Richard S.J. & Yumkella, Kandeh K., 2011. "Considering the energy, water and food nexus: Towards an integrated modelling approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7896-7906.
    3. Wang, Hao & Nakata, Toshihiko, 2009. "Analysis of the market penetration of clean coal technologies and its impacts in China's electricity sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 338-351, January.
    4. Rio Carrillo, Anna Mercè & Frei, Christoph, 2009. "Water: A key resource in energy production," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(11), pages 4303-4312, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yuan, Jiahai & Lei, Qi & Xiong, Minpeng & Guo, Jingsheng & Hu, Zheng, 2016. "The prospective of coal power in China: Will it reach a plateau in the coming decade?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 495-504.
    2. Ana Luiza Fontenelle & Erik Nilsson & Ieda Geriberto Hidalgo & Cintia B. Uvo & Drielli Peyerl, 2022. "Temporal Understanding of the Water–Energy Nexus: A Literature Review," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(8), pages 1-21, April.
    3. Yuan, Jiahai & Li, Peng & Wang, Yang & Liu, Qian & Shen, Xinyi & Zhang, Kai & Dong, Liansai, 2016. "Coal power overcapacity and investment bubble in China during 2015–2020," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 97(C), pages 136-144.
    4. Bing Xue & Mario Tobias, 2015. "Sustainability in China: Bridging Global Knowledge with Local Action," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(4), pages 1-7, March.
    5. He, Gang & Zhang, Hongliang & Xu, Yuan & Lu, Xi, 2017. "China’s clean power transition: Current status and future prospect," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 3-10.
    6. Jinjing Gao & Peng Zhao & Hongwei Zhang & Guozhu Mao & Yuan Wang, 2018. "Operational Water Withdrawal and Consumption Factors for Electricity Generation Technology in China—A Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-15, April.
    7. Peng Ou & Ruting Huang & Xin Yao, 2016. "Economic Impacts of Power Shortage," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(7), pages 1-21, July.
    8. Jia, Chenhui & Yan, Ping & Liu, Pei & Li, Zheng, 2021. "Energy industrial water withdrawal under different energy development scenarios: A multi-regional approach and a case study of China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    9. Chu, Chu & Ritter, William & Sun, Xiaohui, 2019. "Spatial variances of water-energy nexus in China and its implications for provincial resource interdependence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 487-502.
    10. Zhang, Chao & Zhong, Lijin & Liang, Sai & Sanders, Kelly T. & Wang, Jiao & Xu, Ming, 2017. "Virtual scarce water embodied in inter-provincial electricity transmission in China," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 187(C), pages 438-448.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Yang, Jin & Chen, Bin, 2016. "Energy–water nexus of wind power generation systems," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 169(C), pages 1-13.
    2. Khan, Zarrar & Linares, Pedro & García-González, Javier, 2017. "Integrating water and energy models for policy driven applications. A review of contemporary work and recommendations for future developments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 1123-1138.
    3. Logan, Lauren H. & Stillwell, Ashlynn S., 2018. "Probabilistic assessment of aquatic species risk from thermoelectric power plant effluent: Incorporating biology into the energy-water nexus," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 434-450.
    4. Koch, Hagen & Vögele, Stefan, 2013. "Hydro-climatic conditions and thermoelectric electricity generation – Part I: Development of models," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 42-51.
    5. Joe Williams & Stefan Bouzarovski & Erik Swyngedouw, 2019. "The urban resource nexus: On the politics of relationality, water–energy infrastructure and the fallacy of integration," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(4), pages 652-669, June.
    6. Gu, Alun & Teng, Fei & Lv, Zhiqiang, 2016. "Exploring the nexus between water saving and energy conservation: Insights from industry sector during the 12th Five-Year Plan period in China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 28-38.
    7. Gu, Yifan & Wang, Hongtao & Xu, Jin & Wang, Ying & Wang, Xin & Robinson, Zoe P. & Li, Fengting & Wu, Jiang & Tan, Jianguo & Zhi, Xing, 2019. "Quantification of interlinked environmental footprints on a sustainable university campus: A nexus analysis perspective," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 246(C), pages 65-76.
    8. Dubreuil, Aurelie & Assoumou, Edi & Bouckaert, Stephanie & Selosse, Sandrine & Maı¨zi, Nadia, 2013. "Water modeling in an energy optimization framework – The water-scarce middle east context," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 268-279.
    9. Massimo Peri & Daniela Vandone & Lucia Baldi, 2017. "Volatility Spillover between Water, Energy and Food," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(6), pages 1-16, June.
    10. Khan, Zarrar & Linares, Pedro & Rutten, Martine & Parkinson, Simon & Johnson, Nils & García-González, Javier, 2018. "Spatial and temporal synchronization of water and energy systems: Towards a single integrated optimization model for long-term resource planning," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 499-517.
    11. Sandra Venghaus & Carolin Märker & Sophia Dieken & Florian Siekmann, 2019. "Linking Environmental Policy Integration and the Water-Energy-Land-(Food-)Nexus: A Review of the European Union’s Energy, Water, and Agricultural Policies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 12(23), pages 1-16, November.
    12. Rebecka Ericsdotter Engström & Georgia Destouni & Mark Howells & Vivek Ramaswamy & Holger Rogner & Morgan Bazilian, 2019. "Cross-Scale Water and Land Impacts of Local Climate and Energy Policy—A Local Swedish Analysis of Selected SDG Interactions," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(7), pages 1-28, March.
    13. Payet-Burin, Raphael & Bertoni, Federica & Davidsen, Claus & Bauer-Gottwein, Peter, 2018. "Optimization of regional water - power systems under cooling constraints and climate change," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 155(C), pages 484-494.
    14. Lauri Ahopelto & Noora Veijalainen & Joseph H. A. Guillaume & Marko Keskinen & Mika Marttunen & Olli Varis, 2019. "Can There be Water Scarcity with Abundance of Water? Analyzing Water Stress during a Severe Drought in Finland," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-18, March.
    15. Andrew Chapman & Timothy Fraser & Melanie Dennis, 2019. "Investigating Ties between Energy Policy and Social Equity Research: A Citation Network Analysis," Social Sciences, MDPI, vol. 8(5), pages 1-18, April.
    16. Govindan, Rajesh & Al-Ansari, Tareq, 2019. "Computational decision framework for enhancing resilience of the energy, water and food nexus in risky environments," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 653-668.
    17. Ingrid Boas & Frank Biermann & Norichika Kanie, 2016. "Cross-sectoral strategies in global sustainability governance: towards a nexus approach," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 449-464, June.
    18. Foster, John & Bell, William Paul & Wild, Phillip & Sharma, Deepak & Sandu, Suwin & Froome, Craig & Wagner, Liam & Misra, Suchi & Bagia, Ravindra, 2013. "Analysis of institutional adaptability to redress electricity infrastructure vulnerability due to climate change," MPRA Paper 47787, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Krarti, Moncef & Aldubyan, Mohammad, 2021. "Mitigation analysis of water consumption for power generation and air conditioning of residential buildings: Case study of Saudi Arabia," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 290(C).
    20. Lucia de Strasser, 2017. "Calling for Nexus Thinking in Africa’s Energy Planning," ESP: Energy Scenarios and Policy 263161, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:6:y:2014:i:10:p:7155-7180:d:41241. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.