Et tu, Brutus? This stupid headline is popping up everywhere. Waste of pixels.

the first tens of millions of cars will be charged with off-peak electricity, requiring no drop of extra water (and no CO2).
Anyway, it would be best not to waste hot water, because it is wasting energy.
Even if that is not a problem, I suppose the ocean has enough water to cool the powerplants. Since electricity can be transported very easily, they just need to build the powerplants at the right place. The amount of water needed to produce an equal amount of bio-energy is hundreds of times higher...
If I read correctly, a worst case scenario predicts a 3% increase in US water consumption for a 25% transformation of the vehicles. So 12% increase for 100% transformation. Small price to pay. (especially since the 12% could be seawater)

Harvey this is not an attack on using PHEVs or EVs. It simply points out that the conversion from fossil to electric propulsion may create water resource problems if we choose old energy forms to generate this electricity such as coal, nuclear or natural gas. It is another good argument for using wind turbines that does not stress any natural resources in any important manner.

Pointing fingers of Texas is not fair by any means. Texas is already the state in the US that produces the largest quantum of renewable energy and they are speeding up installations of wind turbines like no other place on earth apart perhaps from China. The fact is that Texas has lately become a green energy leader and an example to follow.

It is fair game, better to acknowledge it. Not that heavy oil or ethanol wouldn't use more. A major influx of EV/PHEVs could potentially send a water stressed area over the edge if local power generation is water-intensive. All the PHEV's effects are worth weighing if we plan on having a large number of them. As they become numerous they could help reduce water usage at times aiding with demand-side management using V2G, or acting as a battery for the growing number of solar projects to help meet peak demand.

As an electric engineer, I have to say that I am dissapointed that this study is so skewed towards the worst case scenario. I say this because the whole point of going electric or plug in hybrid is to use renewable sources to power this vehicles. Let's use geothermal as an example. Geothermal energy is a fairly constant source of electricity and a geothermal plant produces electricity with negligeble down time (translation: electricity is produced for more than 97% of the time). So let's start with some assumptions: let's find out how many electric cars can be powered by a 100 MW geothermal plant if you can get 3 miles/ KW*hr and you drive the cars for 15,000 miles a year.

Miles/yr=100MW*24hr*365*(1000KW/MW)=876,000,000 miles/yr

Now let's see how many cars can be driven for 15,000 miles/yr:

# of cars = (876,000,000 miles/yr)/15,000 miles
# of cars = 58,400

So the next question is how many 100 MW geothermal plants have to be built in order to power the 16 million new cars that are sold in the US every year:

# of 100MW geothermal plants = 16,000,000/58,400
= 274 geothermal plants.
The beauty of geothermal plants is that both the hot water and the heat sink (cold water) are both under ground most of the times.

Notice that I purposely left out wind power (which does not need any water) and I also left out solar power.
In short, difficult: Yes, expensive: Absolutely, but if you look at the amount of money spent in Irak, is very doable.

It is good to consider all the impacts, positive and negative, of a shift away from fossil fuels. Positive, long term change won't happen just by drinking the Kool-Aid. Potential nagatives must be identified so that they can be mitigated.

The availability of water is as big a long-term issue as is global warming. The two are directly linked, as GW may well have unknown and drastic impacts on distribution of world water supplies. If you don't have clean water to drink, not being able to drive your car suddenly doesn't seem like such a big issue.

I agree that there are many good strategies to avoid additional strains on our water resources as we move to decrease our output of CO2. Identifying the issue is the first step towards solutions.

Some of these reactions are a little bit over the top (knee-jerk even).

If you move the point of conversion from chemical energy to work from the IC engine to a centralized generation facility, there are of course going to be water impacts.

The use of renewables will help to mitigate this trend, but we are not to the point yet where plug-ins will be generally powered by renewables.

We do seem to be experiencing quite a few sensationalist headlines this past few weeks, aimed at scaring folk away from developing electric vehicles. Usually channeled via some university or other to make it sound impressive - when much of the supposed science is distinctly amateurish and incomplete.

I'm not given to conspiracy theories, but if it is all part of some campaign, they've left it too late. There are now far too many players actively involved in developing EVs, in too many countries.

In transport, the future is electric. And those who see problems in that would probably be better employed in helping overcome the hurdles rather than trying to stop the race.

"Effing lame! Can't even get it's terminology straight. In a closed-loop system the water doesn't escape, it just keeps going around because the system is closed."

DS: What you say makes sense.

I wondered about the cloaed and open loop. It seemed an odd use fo 'closed' and 'open', But I don't know much about generation matters so I kept quiet.

Also:

I find it hard to believe there is anything to the water concerns. Plug-in sales will be widely distributed across the country so the load will ramp up slowly.

The utilities can handle their part provided they are actually allowed to build. The bigger problems are fuel and emissions.

We posted the author's response to the sensationalist headlines and misinterpretation of the study at
http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/927.html

And this afternoon, a somewhat more balanced report appeared at ScienceNOW http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/310/2

-- Felix Kramer, Founder, CalCars.org

By the time PHEVs and EVs begin to be sold in meaningful numbers, renewables (solar, wind et al.) and conservation, e.g., LED lighting, will begin to displace these water guzzling thermoelectric power plants. The deployment of PHEVs and EVs will coincide with the resultant decrease in water demand from thermo plants.

Globe average water vapor residence time in atmosphere is less than 9 days. After that water vapor comes down as rain or snow. Most of the evaporated in cooling towers water will return (except in locations downwind to ocean) to the ground, and will be used more and more times. This effect is well known in irrigation: massive irrigated agricultural areas increase rainfall downwind. And compared to agriculture, water evaporation (not usage as defined in water permits) is laughably small. One glass of orange juice, for example, requires 1000 glasses of water for irrigation (and most of it is returned back to ground to be used once again).

I'd just like to put this out there:
(In this context, "consumes" means evaporates)
greyfalcon.net/nuclearwater.png
www.nrel.gov/csp/troughnet/pdfs/2007/dersch_dry_cooling.pdf

Oh yeah, and as for oil refining water use.
greyfalcon.net/tarsands.png

Not only is it extremely water intensive, but it also creates a toxic sludge out of it, rather than freeing it up later.