Saving Water in West Saves Energy

Saving Water in West Saves Energy

10/7/04

Better coordination of water and energy policy in the West can conserve energy and money, according to a new analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Pacific Institute that explores the energy embedded in urban and agricultural water use.

A Columbia River case study in Energy Down the Drain finds that more than 2,600 gigawatt-hours a year, or almost 25 percent of Seattle's annual energy use, is lost to upstream irrigation diversions in the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Columbia Basin Project. Other diversions in the upper Columbia and Snake River systems also would show large amounts of energy lost to upstream irrigation, noted the authors of the report.

The Bureau's Grand Coulee Dam system and matrix of irrigation channels enables farming of grains, fruits, potatoes and other specialty crops on nearly 700,000 acres in the Columbia Basin. The report focused on the energy implications of growing potatoes only.

The authors recommend that policymakers include the energy foregone at the generating station -- the energy opportunity cost -- as well as the energy used to deliver water to the field, when accounting for energy costs of irrigation on rivers with hydroelectric dams.

They do not, however, suggest a reallocation of water resources amounting to 2,600 GWh a year in the Columbia Basin Project. But they do note the potential for multiple benefits from dry-year land fallowing. In dry years, when electricity prices are high, voluntary land fallowing and water transfer agreements may be able to pay farmers more than they could earn growing low-value crops and still buy environmental flows, according to the report.

Report co-author Gary Wolff, principal economist and engineer at the Oakland, Calif.-based Pacific Institute, noted that the report's recommendation for land fallowing is limited to dry years. He added, however, "If electricity becomes much more valuable on a permanent basis, then there will be a potential for water leasing every year. What might cause that? Climate change is one possibility, if it makes less hydropower available."

The report requests that the Bureau of Reclamation initiate talks with power marketing authorities, salmon advocates, regulatory agencies and farmers in the Northwest on a mutually beneficial dry-year contingency plan. It also suggests that policymakers throughout the West explore dry-year partnerships on river systems with large water diversions upstream of hydropower facilities and degraded rivers.

Diane Cross, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Reclamation's Pacific Northwest regional office, said the agency would refrain from commenting until it had thoroughly examined the report. "But it certainly deserves to be looked at," she said.

A San Diego case study found that end-use water, especially for energy-intensive uses like showering and washing clothes, consumes more energy than any other part of the urban water delivery and treatment cycle. The study calculated that if San Diego relied on conservation instead of additional water from northern California for its next 100,000 acre-feet of water, it would save enough energy to supply electricity for a quarter of all households in San Diego.

Such findings prompted the authors to make two main recommendations: Decision makers should better integrate energy issues into water policies; and water and energy policymakers should give water conservation higher priority.

"Surprisingly, policy actions that affect end uses of water may have much larger energy implications than policy actions that affect the mix of physical water sources," the authors found. They conclude that conservation has much greater potential, and stronger energy-related economic and environmental benefits, than has been recognized.

By November, the Pacific Institute plans to add an air-quality layer to its model, allowing water planners to compare scenarios that calculate the embedded energy use and air emissions in water management. [Garrett Hering]

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