Virtual scarce water embodied in inter-provincial electricity transmission in China

Intra-national electricity transmission drives virtual water transfer from electricity production regions to electricity consumption regions. In China, the water-intensive thermoelectric power industry is expanding quickly in many water-scarce energy production hubs in northern and northwestern provinces. This study constructed a node-flow model of inter-provincial electricity transmission to investigate the virtual water and scarcity-adjusted virtual water (or virtual scarce water) embodied in the electricity transmission network. It is revealed that total inter-provincial virtual water transfer embodied in electricity transmission was 623millionm3 in 2011, equivalent to 12.7% of the national total thermoelectric water consumption. The top three largest single virtual water flows are West Inner Mongolia-to-Beijing (44millionm3), East Inner Mongolia-to-Liaoning (39millionm3), and Guizhou-to-Guangdong (37millionm3). If the actual volumes of consumptive water use are translated into scarcity-adjusted water consumption based on Water Stress Index, West Inner Mongolia (81millionm3), Shanxi (63millionm3) and Ningxia (30millionm3) become the top three exporters of virtual scarce water. Many ongoing long-distance electricity transmission projects in China will enlarge the scale of scarce water outflows from northwestern regions and potentially increase their water stress.

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