Producing electricity from coal, gas and oil is a surprisingly thirsty business. The United States needs around 731,920 million litres a day (161,000m gallons) to produce and burn the nearly 900m tonnes of coal it uses each year to generate just a third of the nation’s electricity.

In India, plans to produce 500 gigawatts of coal-fired electricity by 2040, will require at least 58bn cubic metres per year (pdf). And in China, about 15% of national water withdrawals are used for coal mining, processing, ash control, and for cooling of its coal-fired power plants.

Where will all this water come from?

Global energy consumption is forecast to increase nearly 50% by 2040, driven mostly by emerging economies such as China and India. Energy strategies based on fossil fuels will require much more water to be allocated to new power plants. This additional water can come from only two sources: from those who are already using it or from the resource base, which is difficult when many river basins already face over-abstraction.

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The water-energy conundrum is a good example of the complicated environmental systems challenges faced by policymakers planning strategies for national economic growth.



For example, an economy dominated by rural farming activities will likely be poorer per capita than one which is more urban and industrialised. Historically, many countries have allocated the majority of their water to agriculture – 70% is the global average – yet most industrialisation strategies are based on increasing fossil fuel capacity to drive growth. Few countries plan the majority of their national energy security around less thirsty renewables, such as wind or solar. Chile may be the exception.



This can become politically challenging. Trade-offs are required for regional water basins to not be dangerously overused and put at risk of drying up, leaving everyone worse off.

Someone, usually farmers, will be required to effectively use less water – by paying higher water prices, for example – to free up water for an urban-focused energy strategy. Social tensions, which politicians would prefer to avoid, can flare up as a result, such as recent riots in Karnataka, India.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Agitation increased in the state of Karnataka in September 2016 after the Supreme Court ordered the release of 15,000 cusecs of water each day to neighbouring Tamil Nadu, while Karnataka faced an acute shortage of water itself.

Photograph: Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images

The outcome is usually the easiest but least ideal strategy; water resources are over-used, farmers continue to irrigate so that thirsty, fossil fuel-based industrialisation can expand, all to the point of hydrological unsustainability and, in some cases, the collapse of the water system.



This happened during the last century in many countries of the southern Mediterranean and across drier parts of the United States and the former Soviet Union – perhaps the most infamous case is the Aral Sea in Kazakhstan. Following decades of inefficient water use in farming, urban centres and industry, structural problems of water scarcity are now coming home to roost in many of these areas. They are also being replicated in water-scarce emerging economies across Africa and Asia, threatening food and economic security (pdf) unless major policy changes are put in place. Changing weather patterns combined with historic levels of water over-use can act as risk multipliers, making a bad situation worse.

In France and the south-east United States (pdf) there are cases of nuclear reactors being throttled back and temporarily shut down because of drought-induced water shortages. And in March last year a new 2,300 MW coal plant in West Bengal had to suspend generation due to low water levels in the canal that feeds it.



This is why the World Economic Forum encourages a systems approach to solving environment and economic problems – a strategy that brings together all the right people from across government, civil society and business, with access to the right resources – to help jointly explore and resolve these food-energy-water, climate and growth conundrums.

For example, when all costs and risks are considered, is an energy security strategy based on fossil fuels really the cheapest and smartest long-term solution? And more worrying still for a policymaker in a water-stressed country, will the pursuit of fossil fuels actually exacerbate social and political tensions over water security more than it delivers citizen satisfaction through improved energy security?

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At the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this week, heads of government and leaders from science, civil society and business will tackle some of these interconnected challenges. Why, for example, are mainstream economics failing to account for these environmental risks and what can be done to better manage our global environmental commons? Are there practical partnerships that help governments solve these challenges, such as the Water Resources Group or Tropical Forest Alliance, which could be expanded? Could new production or consumption strategies, such as the circular or sharing economy, “design-out” some of these systems failures? And could new technologies such as blockchain help society to better manage these kinds of water and energy trade-offs?

Unless we address these tricky challenges using a systems approach, we will never resolve the kinds of interconnected environmental risks we will face in the coming decades.

Dominic Waughray is the head of public private partnership at the World Economic Forum. Follow @dwaughray on Twitter.

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