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About one fifth of electricity in the United States comes from natural gas power plants. Water is
required first to extract natural gas from its underground source and then to transform the fuels
chemical energy into electricity.
Electricity Generation
More than 80 percent of natural gas-fired generation in the United States comes from natural gas
combined-cycle (NGCC) power plants. The rest are simple gas combustion turbines (9 percent)
or simple steam turbines (9 percent).[1] An NGCC plant first uses a gas combustion turbine to
generate electricity, then uses the waste heat to make steam to generate additional electricity in a
steam turbine. Because gas combustion turbines require no cooling (having no steam to
condense), the overall combined cycle system requires much less water for cooling than
traditional steam turbine technologies.
Because the amount of cooling necessary is much less per unit of electricity output in NGCC
plants than in coal or nuclear plants, dry cooling systems are more economical for NGCC plants
than for other thermoelectric options. A dry cooling unit in a NGCC plant can only be one third
the size of a dry cooling unit for a coal or nuclear plant with the same electricity
output.[2] About 8 percent of natural gas combined cycle plants in the United States use dry
cooling technology; 80 percent rely on recirculating systems. Fewer than seven percent use
once-through cooling.[3]
Table 1: Water requirements for cooling by type in gallons per megawatt-hour [4]
Fuel Extraction
Natural gas in the United States has traditionally been extracted from deep vertical wells that
require relatively small amounts of water for drilling but that produce more than 200 billion
gallons of water per year that surfaces with the gas on extraction.[5] This "produced water" is
often trapped in these underground formations alongside natural gas.[6] The main methods of
disposing of produced water involve pumping it back into oil- or gas-producing wells to bolster
production, or injecting it deep into other formations below usable groundwater resources.[7]
Active Marcellus Shale gas well in West Virginia. Additional water storage pit is not captured in
the photo. Photo Source: WVSORO
In addition to concerns about water quality, water quantity is also an issue. A single
hydrofracked well can require several million gallons per treatment dozens of times what is
used in conventional vertical drilling.[13],[14],[15] Withdrawing this amount of water over a
short period of time can strain local water sources.
Fuel Processing
After the gas is extracted, an additional 400 million gallons of water per day are consumed for
natural gas refining and pipeline operations.[16]
For more data on lifecycle water use, see Meldrum et al. 2013.
Sources
[1] Energy Information Administration (EIA). 2012. Annual electric utility data.Washington,
DC.
[2] Government Accountability Office (GAO). 2009. Energy-Water Nexus: Improvements to
Federal Water Use Data Would Increase Understanding of Trends in Power Plant Water Use.
Washington, DC.
[3] Union of Concerned Scientists. 2012. UCS EW3 Energy-Water Database
V.1.3.www.ucsusa.org/ew3database.
[4] J. Macknick, R. Newmark, G. Heath, and K.C. Hallet. 2012. Operational water consumption
and withdrawal factors for electricity generating technologies: a review of existing
literature. Environmental Research Letters. 7 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/045802.
[5] US Department of Energy (DOE). 2006. Energy Demands on Water Resources: Report to
Congress on the Interdependency of Energy and Water.Washington, DC.
[6] U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). 2009. Oil and Natural Gas Water Resources
Program. Washington, DC.