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Energy Group Urges Planning for Droughts:
Avoid Nuclear & Coal Water Hogs;
Turn On Solar, Wind & Energy Efficiency
Atlanta—As the Southeast copes with a drought of epic proportions, clean energy advocates remind policymakers that low-water consuming energy technologies are the wave of the future and that the switch to alternatives is overdue.
Southern Alliance for Clean Energy continues to call on Georgia energy regulators to put the brakes on Georgia utility plans to waste even more of the state’s scarce water supplies with proposed new nuclear reactors. Meanwhile, Green Law, together with several other environmental groups, is legally battling Dynegy’s proposed coal plant in Georgia, another scheme that will unnecessarily deplete water supplies.
“We find that when people realize the massive amount of water that nuclear and coal plants use, they start wondering why we don’t generate energy with better technologies and save that water for drinking water, farming and recreation,” Sara Barczak, safe energy director of Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said.
Since 2004 and again this week, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy has made requests to the Georgia Public Service Commission to start requiring utilities to address water shortages in their energy supply plans. To date, utilities have ignored water concerns and instead propose to buy or build new, water-intensive nuclear and coal power plants. Over the past year, the energy group has also raised a red flag on water problems from power plants to the Georgia Water Council that largely ignored the issue in its draft state water plan.
Yet according to the Georgia Environmental Protection Division, the electricity sector is the largest water user in the state. Metro-Atlanta and surrounding counties draw 448 million gallons per day for public supply purposes from the Chattahoochee River, the most utilized drinking water source in Georgia. Power plants, though not the largest consumptive user on this river, account for 44% of total water withdrawals in the Chattahoochee basin.
As a water saving tactic, state regulators have been urged to require electric utilities to promote far more energy efficiency than is currently done. According to a study by the state of Georgia, reducing electricity use in the state has the immediate impact of reducing water required by power plants. EnergyStar® appliances, such as front loading washing machines, require approximately 50% less energy per load and uses 30-50% less water than a typical model.
Government and industry estimates show that nuclear power plants consume about 620 times the amount of water a comparable amount of energy generated by wind power would require, and 21 times the amount of water needed for a comparable amount of energy from solar power. Coal consumes 490 times more water than wind energy and over 16 times more than solar. There are significant water reductions using biomass gasification technologies for power plants also.
As Atlanta and other cities in the region run low on water, the burden of having water-hogging nuclear and coal plants diverting massive amounts of water is increasingly evident. This week Alabama’s Governor Riley sent a letter to President Bush about Alabama’s opposition to the state of Georgia’s efforts to get an emergency drought response in place, citing the dire need for Alabama to get water to supply nuclear plant Farley along the Chattahoochee River.
Riley’s letter stated, “At a minimum, the lack of adequate cooling water could require a shutdown of the plant, thereby putting the reliability of the electric power grid in the region at risk.”
According to a 2003 license renewal application for plant Farley from Southern Company to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, plant Farley returned about half of what it withdrew from the river. In the past, Farley has reported over 46 million gallons of water per day were consumed by the plant, primarily as evaporative loss from the cooling towers. Even when not generating electricity, nuclear power plants must have water to continuously cool nuclear fuel, at times requiring 10% or even higher percentages of the water needed for full operation.
Georgia utility proposals to expand nuclear power in the state will require even more water usage. Data from Southern Company and other government agencies shows that with average per capita daily water use in Georgia at 75 gallons from surface and ground water more water from the Savannah River will be lost daily from the two existing and two proposed reactors at nuclear Plant Vogtle than is currently used daily by all residents of Atlanta, Augusta, and Savannah combined. The Savannah River has been eyed by the city of Atlanta as a possible water resource to tap into given the Chattahoochee’s limited capacity.
“Regulators should not allow electricity generators to continue making bad water choices,” Rita Kilpatrick, Georgia policy director for Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, said. “When regulators look at new power plant proposals and ignore how much water will be taken away from other water users, there’s a real problem. We’ve got to plan for droughts, cut our losses and march ahead with more sustainable energy technologies like solar, wind, biomass gasification, and energy efficiency.”
To download Governor Riley’s full letter to President Bush, go to http://www.governorpress.alabama.gov/pr/pr-2007-10-22-01-gadroughtreqdanger.asp.
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Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible energy choices that create global warming solutions and ensure clean, safe, and healthy communities throughout the Southeast.
For more information, go to: www.cleanenergy.org
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