Water Constraints on Energy Development: A Framework for Analysis

摘要

A study of the impacts of future energy development on freshwater resources carried out as part of the US National Academy of Sciences' CONAES study led to the identification of severe constraints on US energy development that could arise in the future because of the geographic and temporal variability of the freshwater resource. The present essay is not intended to summarize the results of the CONAES work on wate-energy problems, but rather to describe the components of the analytical method developed for that study. Five facets characterize our assessment method: specification of future patterns of energy supply and demand takes the form of scenarios; which describe possibilities rather than predictions; the water requirements of future energy activities often are highly unertain today; the freshwater resource is described by a set of quantities calculable from daily runoff measurements; the information encapsulated by these parameters is of direct relevance to aquatic biologists and to energy suppliers and consumers; and only a very preliminary and incomplete effort has gone into the important problem of placing the impacts of water consumption in a human context. (ERA citation 06:027695)