China’s thirsty coal industry guzzles precious water

On a bitter cold day in Inner Mongolia, the grasslands here hold an unexpected sight: a shallow lake so warm that the surface is shrouded in steam.

This lake is a recent addition, formed by water discharged from a new plant that converts coal into methane gas.

When operating at full capacity, the Datang International plant will require more than 7 billion gallons of water each year. And this is just a side stream of the vast flows of water demanded by plants turning coal into gas, chemicals and electricity in Inner Mongolia and other regions of China's north and west.

These coal complexes rank among the planet's largest industrial emitters of carbon dioxide, which in the decades ahead will escalate climate change and acidification of the oceans.

But right now, the coal industry's massive thirst may be both its biggest liability and the biggest constraint to expansion in a nation of more than 1.3 billion people struggling with serious water shortages.

Vast amounts of water are used for cooling and processing some 4 billion tons of coal that China consumes each year.

Some 15 percent of the nation's annual water withdrawals are claimed by the coal industry, with many mines and plants located in arid areas where rivers are under stress, underground aquifers are in decline and pollution is rampant.

In the decades ahead, climate change will aggravate China's water problems by melting glaciers that help sustain the summer flows of some major rivers. By 2030, the basin of the Yellow River, China's second-longest river, is forecast to be 18 percent short of the water needed to meet demand, according toa studyfrom China's Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research.

Conservation efforts by the Chinese government include the construction of new coal-fired power plants that recirculate the water used for cooling. China also is spending $62 billion to redistribute water by canals from wetter areas of the country to dry zones in one of the biggest construction projects of all time.

Despite such efforts, Bloomberg New Energy Finance, ina reportreleased earlier this year, noted that most of the power plants operated by the five largest state-owned power companies are in water-scarce areas and at high risk of flow disruptions during the next two decades. There may not be enough water to support all the new coal plants, the report added.

In Inner Mongolia, water shortages have been a problem for decades. Overgrazing and farming have turned some once-productive lands into dust bowls, forcing the relocation of thousands of people, and stirring up huge sand storms that have swept across Asia.

Coal development in recent years added to the region's stresses, accelerating desertification as open-pit mines reroute water flows and coal plants draw from water reserves.

"We already find great tension between coal and water. Many communities are affected, and the industry is overusing water from the major rivers," said Sun Qingwei, an environmental activist with a Ph.D. in geography who has conducted extensive research in Inner Mongolia and other arid regions.

"Ruthless water grab"

For China's environmental movement, water shortages have emerged as a rallying cry in their campaign to reduce the nation's reliance on coal. In recent years, the movement has been buoyed by growing public concern about industrial pollution, and activists such as Sun have taken on a more aggressive watchdog role.

Sun is a slender man with a wry smile, whose family roots are in the coal industry in China's Shandong province, where his father worked as a mining engineer. He ventured underground only once, when his father gave him a tour that ended in a spot where eight miners died.

"He wanted me to remember where I live — and where I grow up," Sun said. "It is a very deep memory. They (miners) work so hard, and struggle just to survive. I have a deep respect for them."

Sun spent most of his career at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, where he examined the causes of desertification in western and northern regions. He found that coal development was taking an increasing toll on the water resources.

In 2011, he went to work for Greenpeace's Beijing office. "As a researcher, you just point out the challenge, but I wanted to contribute my energy to change the environment," Sun said.

The firstcoal reporthe researched was released in 2012 in an unusual partnership between Greenpeace and his former employer, the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It found that water demands of major coal hubs would claim water now used for farming and urban populations by 2015, and urged the government to reconsider the "size and scale" of the coal expansion.

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• Resource Management
• Environment
• Energy Reduction