ONTARIO CENTRE FOR ENGINEERING AND PUBLIC POLICY THE

JOURNAL

OF POLICY ENGAGEMENT Vol 2 No 1 | January 2010 The Journal of Policy Engagement is published six times a year by the Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy. The council of Professional Engineers Ontario (PEO) established the centre in June 2008 to enhance the engagement of the engineering profession in the development of public policy to better serve and protect the public interest. The centre?s mandate also includes outreach to members of the engineering profession, the academic community, policy-makers and others interested in advancing the public interest. The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily refl ect those of PEO or any other organization. Contact: Donald Wallace, Executive Director Ontario Centre for Engineering and Public Policy 40 Sheppard Avenue West, Suite 101 Toronto, Ontario M2N 6K9 416-840-1078 dwallace@ocepp.ca SUBSCRIPTIONS (non-PEO members) Canada (6 issues): $21.00 incl. GST Other (6 issues): $25.00 Students (6 issues): $10.50 incl. GST Single copy: $3.67 incl. GST Approximately $5.00 from each PEO membership fee is allocated to The Journal of Policy Engagement and is non-deductible. Contact: Catherine Shearer-Kudel, 416-224-1100, ext. 1204, cshearerkudel@ocepp.ca. e

How our energy future affects our water future

By Gail Krantzberg, PhD, and Roddi Bassermann, P.Eng. Executive summary Our water supplies, and the Great Lakes specifi - cally, are under a largely ignored threat from both existing and potential forms of energy generation. While acknowledging the need for new energy sources to meet increasing demand and confront climate change, Gail Krantzberg and Roddi Bassermann call for the impact on water and the Great Lakes to be considered before any new projects are approved. The authors point out that almost all current and proposed energy sources have an effect on water. For example, nuclear plants, especially, and other power plants use water to cool their operations. When the water is returned to the source in an altered, warm state, it has negative consequences for the water quality and the habitat. Even ?clean? hydroelectric plants involve dams that impact upon the local fi sh. To preserve the Great Lakes and the 40 million people who depend on them, Krantzberg and Bassermann call for heightened research into energy technologies that are sensitive to both water quality and quantity. These considerations, they say, must be part of the national energy policy debate. Introduction Despite all the public attention paid in recent years to the environmental impact of most forms of energy generation, one signifi cant consequence has been barely mentioned. Hardly discussed at all is how energy generation adversely impacts water quality and quantity. This is particularly threatening to the Great Lakes, the largest surface freshwater system on Earth. The region is home to 40 million people who rely predominantly on the lakes for drinking water and a range of economic activities. Safeguarding the health of the basin?s water resources is vital to Canada and the US. However, the Great Lakes? ecological and economic integrity is under siege from a variety of anthropogenic pressures, especially the potentially enormous impacts of climate change. Many forms of energy generation use water indiscriminately in a manner that impacts negatively on both water quality and quantity. The use of falling water to produce hydroelectric power, for example, dams waterways, resulting in downstream depletion of base fl ow needed for successful spawning and can create a physical barrier to fi sh passage for upstream movement and successful ?recruitment.? Water is also used for cooling in thermoelectric applications such as nuclear power and in power plants, whether natural gas or coal-fired. Other extensive energy-producing uses of water include fuel extraction, mining and refining. For biofuel production, water is required for plant irrigation and fuel processing. Furthermore, water is required in the production of diesel fuel used to transport uranium from mines to processing facilities and then to nuclear power plants. In all cases, there can be significant environmental impacts. At nuclear plants, large amounts of fresh water are required to cool fuel rods. As a result, nuclear power plants are usually located close to large bodies of water to which the warmer water is returned. Winfi eld et al. (2006) note that approximately 225 litres of water are required for every kilowatt hour of electricity produced by nuclear power plants. (The amount of cooling water used annually at Ontario?s Pickering and Darlington nuclear power plants is 19 times the water consumption of Toronto.) The return of the cooling water in a warm state to its source is known to have negative impacts upon fi sh populations 2 The Journal of Policy Engagement

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