By Rob Runyan, August 29, 2008
No matter who gets the keys to the White House come January, the next president will be casing America for more homegrown energy.
It could mitigate climate change, foster national security and create thousands of green-collar jobs, the leading candidates say. But something — and something quite vital — gets missed in all the talk. This domestic energy push needs lots of water and it’s creating more competition for the country’s diminishing freshwater supplies.
Already, regions of the country, from the Southwest to the Southeast are experiencing dips in groundwater levels while the Midwest is working quickly to guard freshwater resources that appear less and less abundant than they once did.
The opportunity to find or create new untapped sources of water has ebbed, and experts are advocating better management of the existing sources. Future legislation, including energy and farm bills, may need to factor the freshwater impact into decisions that have brushed aside this issue in the past.
“Usually what was considered appears to be whether it was domestic or not, whether the U.S. has a resource, whether there are powerful political groups that benefit from it,” said Michael Webber, a professor with the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin.
Consider the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, signed by President George W. Bush to help trim the country from often unstable foreign oil suppliers. The renewable fuel standard in the act mandates that 9 billion gallons of renewable fuels, from corn ethanol to biodiesel, be produced in 2008 — simple proof of the ignorance of water supplies, Webber added, since that alone could require 360 billion gallons of freshwater.
“If [Congress] was really concerned about water use they wouldn’t have put those mandates in,” Webber said.
Sen. Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, voted for the Energy Act and has continued to back the ethanol industry. His Republican counterpart, Sen. John McCain, did not vote on the issue but has said he supports ethanol — just not the subsidies that go to agribusiness giants like Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland Co.
“Corn-based ethanol, thanks to the money and influence of lobbyists, has been a case study in the law of unintended consequences,” McCain said in a June speech in Fresno, Calif.
Both candidates increasingly emphasize an energy overhaul with little mention of water implications. Obama wants to take advanced biofuel production from basically nothing in 2008 to 60 billion gallons by 2030, while McCain is calling for the auto industry to beat the 2012 goal of having 50 percent of vehicles capable of running on less gas and more ethanol. Obama advocates for an even faster transition to these flex-fuel vehicles.
But energy and water are inextricably linked; each requires the other to be produced for consumption. So as energy production rises in the United States, so too will its water consumption. And such alternative transportation fuels as ethanol guzzle water with a greater thirst than the fuels they’re replacing.
Scientists spotlighted the issue in a March commentary in the journal Nature, warning that half of the world’s nations would face freshwater shortages by 2025, partly due to rising water consumption in producing energy. It might seem a long time off, but climate change and population surges are already stressing freshwater sources — from the Great Lakes, where the adjoining Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are more than a foot below their long-term average, to Denver, where droughts have the city on pace for its driest year on record.
Mike Hightower, a researcher at Sandia National Laboratory out of Albuquerque, N.M., co-authored the Nature article. A lack of communication between the energy and water sectors has contributed to the problem that could cost the country the freshwater sources that may be more precious than they appear, he said.
Stand on the shore of any of the Great Lakes, and the supply seems limitless — so much so that conservationists sound nearly mad when they talk of a draining supply. Boaters and bathers can stare out from pristine beaches without a glimpse of land. In fact, spread evenly across the lower 48 states, the Great Lakes would submerge the country under about 9.5 feet of water, according to the Great Lakes Information Network.
But the threat is very real, Great Lakes experts say, and it is probable — likely even — that the next U.S. chief executive will have to factor water into any real remapping of America’s energy grid.
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