Huge demands on increasingly scarce water are a major hidden cost of a "business as usual" approach to American electricity generation that needs to be more fully understood by policymakers and the public, according to a new report jointly released by the Newton, Massachusetts-based Civil Society Institute (CSI (News - Alert)) and the Washington, DC-based Environmental Working Group (EWG).

The “Hidden Costs of Power” report—conducted on behalf of the two nonpartisan, not-for-profit organizations by the Cambridge, Massachusetts consulting and research firm, Synapse Energy Economics—contends that  the Clean Energy Standard (CES (News - Alert)) concept supported by both political parties in the United States is a politically driven, “all-in” approach that does not address public needs—including affordability, reliability, adequate water availability and water quality, enhanced public health, improved environmental protection, and mitigation of climate change.


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“This inside-the-Beltway discussion surrounding the CES is supplanting the Renewable Electricity Standard as a principal public policy vehicle for addressing the electric generation mix in the United States,” says the report’s executive summary, adding, “Under the guise of regional differences, the CES seeks to appease entrenched coal, nuclear and natural gas interests by anointing these resources as ‘clean’ in federal statute.”

Grant Smith, senior energy analyst, Civil Society Institute, said, "The government and energy industries are literally flying blind as they plan for continued reliance on coal, natural gas, nuclear power and industrial biomass to meet our energy needs. Each of these is water-intensive and leads to pollution of water, which is increasingly scarce and in competition for other uses such as agriculture and other commercial uses. The drought intensifies the urgency and the imperative that political leaders in both parties hit the pause button on the headlong rush to support nuclear power and fossil fuel use."

Seth Sheldon PhD, CSI’s lead water/energy analyst, added, "In 2005 the Congress mandated a federal water/energy roadmap. Nearly eight years later, that roadmap has not been produced and—either through bureaucratic inertia or fear of hard political questions—the questions are not even being asked, much less their solutions explored. At a time of significant water scarcity and increasing threats to water quality, we can ill afford to ignore this central question about the future of our energy choices."

The new analysis includes the following water-related findings:

Dusty Horwitt, senior counsel, Environmental Working Group, said, "The rush to drill for shale gas is one of the best recent examples of how the costs of water pollution are ignored in the pursuit of supposedly cheap energy. When New York regulators estimate a price tag (News - Alert) of $8-10 billion to build a water treatment plant for New York City if shale gas drilling contaminates its upstate water supply, it raises serious questions about whether shale gas really is so cheap and why water costs aren't always considered from the start."

Geoff Keith, senior associate, Synapse Energy Economics Inc., said, "Too often left out of the equation are a number of important 'hidden' costs, also called 'indirect' or 'externalized' costs, associated with each generation technology. These include costs to society such as depletion of water and other resources, air and water pollution, detrimental impacts on human health and the environment, and contributions to global climate change. While direct costs (the monetary cost to build and operate a generating plant) are important to consumers, so too are these indirect costs, whether or not they can be easily expressed in monetary terms."

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