The Intertwined Tale of Energy and Water

(Page 2 of 2)

August/September 2008
By Rachelle Hill and Dr. Tamim Younos 
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Hence, a single light bulb will consume about 7,200 Btus in one day. From the chart, it can be estimated that fossil fuel thermoelectric plants use between 1,100 to 2,200 gallons of water per million Btu to generate power. This equates to approximately 8 to 16 gallons of water used to make the power needed to run one 60-watt light bulb for 12 hours! Over the duration of one year, this one incandescent light bulb would require about 3,000 to 6,300 gallons of water. Furthermore, it is estimated there are about 111 million occupied housing units in the United States. If each housing unit burned only one light bulb for 12 hours a day, over the course of a year it would add up to about 300 to 650 billion gallons of water.

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Think About it

In the near future, increased energy development will compete for available water resources with other water demands, such as agricultural irrigation and domestic water supplies. As the chart shows, some new initiatives, such as biodiesel and ethanol production, require very large amounts of water. Future production and the cost of energy will be impacted by water availability. There is an urgent need to consider water availability in proposed energy policies.

Reprinted with permission from Virginia Tech.
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  • davisonh 10/2/2008 7:54:13 PM

    Uh oh,be careful about how this water for driving steam turbines is used..I've been to many,many power plants,coal and otherwise for what I used to do for a living(test machinery used for feeding the coal into the boilers)and all of them use cooling towers for cooling the drive steam for driving the massive turbines.Some also pipe the drive steam from the power plants to municipalities to be used for local central heating of buildings or use it for process steam.These cooling towers then use river water or air to cool and condense the steam.But yes the equivalency number you give is correct,thing is that water is usually condensed back and reused.

  • Russell Lowes 9/6/2008 7:50:17 PM

    This article is very impressive. Where did the chart come from specifically -- that is, where from the EIA?
    Thank you!

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