May 23rd, 2013
Via Yahoo! News, an interesting article on North Dakota’s unique watergy nexus: In towns across North Dakota, the wellhead of the North American energy boom, the locals have taken to quoting the adage: “Whiskey is for drinking, and water is for fighting.” It’s not that they lack water, like Texas and California. They are swimming […]
Read more »Water Scarcity May Reshape Energy Industry
May 19th, 2013
Via the Christian Science Monitor, a report on how the demand for fresh water could exceed supply by an estimated 40% by 2030 which would push up prices for the water-intensive energy industry: There is a broad and growing consensus that freshwater is undervalued. It is a limited, but vital, commodity without a price. In […]
Read more »May 12th, 2013
Courtesy of Circle of Blue, a sobering report on fracking’s impact on water in the United States: Hydraulically fractured shale regions are outlined in black and overlaid onto a map of U.S. river basins coded by water risk according to the World Resources Institute’s Aqueduct tool. River basins colored light yellow have low water stress; […]
Read more »Desalination’s Watergy Dilemma
May 9th, 2013
Via OilPrice.com, an interesting look at desalination: Desalination plants consume a significant amount of energy, and the question now is how much energy should we expend on boosting clean drinking water supplies? There are now 17 desalination plants in the proposal process in the US, and each would consume about 15,000 kilowatt-hours of power for […]
Read more »May 5th, 2013
Via National Geographic, an article on the watergy nexus in New Mexico: In drought-plagued New Mexico, water is gold. And this week, Mora County in the northern part of the state took a firm stand to protect its precious liquid: it banned all oil and gas extraction from county lands. It is believed to be […]
Read more »Spread of Hydrofracking Could Strain Water Resources in West, Study Finds
May 3rd, 2013
Courtesy of The New York Times, a report on the impact that fracking may have upon water resources in the western US: In March, workers at a hydraulic fracturing site in western Colorado monitored water pumping pressure and temperature. The technique of oil and gas extraction, which is commonly called “fracking,” uses injected water to […]
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