Doublespeak isn’t a term used since the ’60s. Regretfully. Outright distortion is much more common.
Water is an industry, folks, funded by murky taxes and exploited by layers of underwriters and services near every airport business park, on the shoulder of riparian law, the unfinished rights of our first rights.
Riparian. Utilities use tremendous volumes of water long before piped to our penny pinching showers and guilty lawns.
I remember SecState George Schultz declare in the early ’90s that water costs will jump 500%. Hold your breath: 1,000% is the new horizon. Today, desalination is a bargain, much to Bechtel’s chagrin.
But let’s not worry. Industry will rescue us, observes the segment lobby Lux Research issuing a crafted if not reasoned policy statement. Why is it crafted? Because it’s revenue riding on green.
Unshackling Carbon from Water:
…while new energy sources and extraction methods may reduce carbon intensity, they often impose increased water usage.
On a planet where only 0.008 percent of the water is renewable, such tradeoffs will become an increasingly important consideration for executives and policymakers.
- Retrofits and upgrades will make coal and natural gas electricity sources more water and/or energy efficient. Representative solutions include boiler water treatments, like electrocoagulation, advanced ion exchange and membrane electrolysis, as well as dry condensers and cooling tower water recapture.
- New and improved extraction technologies will be employed. Exploitation of oil sands and improved deep sea extraction will continue to make oil the cheapest, if dirtiest, source of energy for automotive drivetrains. But water recycling technologies like desalination and hydrocarbon recovery could reduce the water- and carbon-intensity of oil extraction from new sources like the tar sands.
- The slow roll-out of transcontinental high-voltage DC transmission lines will hinder low-carbon, low-water energy sources like solar and wind. Biofuels use far too much water and are capable of providing too little energy to make up more than a few percent of global needs.
- Nuclear is the only low-carbon, low-cost energy source that can reliably meet future electricity needs, but water is its Achilles’ heel. However, advanced designs promise to increase efficiency and reduce water intensity, while placing plants on the coasts decouples them from increasingly scarce fresh water sources.
Well Hell. Now you know
- yes, utility execs truly, truly watch your back
- tundra and oceans must be industrialized
- power towers are the real 401K recovery, screw bio
- our coastlines are wide open, note, and lucrative
Carbon or no carbon, on and on we go funding shackles.