Special Report. Water Management: How NETL projects future water use

Power, Apr 2008

As part of its Annual Energy Outlook (AEO), the DOE's Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects future levels of thermoelectric capacity. The AEO projections are based on the EIA's National Energy Modeling System, which is revised yearly to reflect technology advances, supply and demand adjustments, and other market forces.

This analysis uses AEO 2007 projections of changes in generation capacity between 2005 and 2030 (Table 2) to calculate future thermal plants' water withdrawal and consumption needs.

After individual growth numbers for generation technologies are estimated, NETL's Coal Power Plant database is used to determine the average water withdrawal and consumption estimates by plant capacity. Other DOE/NETL studies were used to estimate the performance and water consumption of the newer generation technologies, such as integrated gasification combined cycle and retrofit carbon capture. The analysis was performed for 13 separate North American Electric Reliability Corp. sub-regions.