By John DeFore
With World Water Day on Saturday, this is a good time to note a report that those optimistic about alternative auto tech might prefer to ignore. A report last month in Environmental Science & Technology Online suggests that electric vehicles, while 
a boon for the environment in some ways, “could strain water resources” in regions prone to drought. No, electric cars don’t use water directly. But they use electricity, and most of our current means of generating electricity require water. Water that is heated to make steam to turn turbines. Some power plants lose water to evaporation, others extract it from reservoirs . “All told,” the article says, “electricity generation in the U.S. consumes more water than any other activity except irrigation.”
ES&T’s piece draws on research by University of Texas scholars Carey King and Michael Webber, who have concluded that a plug-in hybrid “withdraws 17 times more water per mile than fueling a gasoline vehicle” and that “replacing 25 percent of U.S. cars, light trucks, and SUVs with electric vehicles would consume roughly an additional 100 Bga [billions of gallons]” of water each year.
(The good news: For what it’s worth, the electricity in non-plug-in hybrids involves no extra water usage, since it’s generated not by a power plant but from the braking action of the car itself.)
The researchers say they’re not trying to discourage the adoption of plug-ins, but simply hope to help policymakers in planning for future needs — building more wind-power generators, for instance, would increase electricity supply without using any more water.
Copyright © 2008 | Distributed by Noofangle Media
1 response so far ↓
1 KensCircus // Apr 2, 2008 at 10:00 am
This article incorporates a common oversight regarding electric car energy usage. The oversight is that oil refineries use more electricity to produce one gallon of gasoline than an electric car uses to go the same distance, at the same performance level as a gas car can go on a gallon of gasoline. For example, the average oil refinery consumes 12KWh of electricity per gallon of gasoline produced. My wife and I drive an electric highway commuter that goes about 80 miles on 12KWhs of electricity. Large electric vehicles like the Phoenix Motor cars SUV goes about 44 miles on 12KWhs of electricity (130 mile range per charge). This means that if all transportation was electric, the demand on the electric grid would actually be less. The article does not take into account the electric energy use of the refinery or the shift of electric power from the refinery directly to the vehicle with a net reduction of energy.
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