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Climate Change Effect on Thermal Power Cooling in the U.S.
Citation:
Climate Change Effect on Thermal Power Cooling in the U.S.
Impact/Purpose:
To estimate the impacts of climate change on the availability of cooling water for thermo-electric plants in the U.S.
Description:
Maintaining reasonable surface-water temperatures is paramount for aquatic ecosystem health. Thermal pollution from power plant effluent can result in unnatural river temperature spikes locally, as well as cause damaging breaches to river temperature. The threat of a nonstationary future climate, specifically changes in air temperature and streamflow, pose a risk to once-through thermoelectric power plants. In this study, we present a framework of a series of models—rainfall-runoff model, water demand model, water resource management model, and power plant uptake and release model—for the contiguous USA. Future scenarios are then applied to the model to test regions of higher vulnerability to river temperature environmental violations, making use of output from two climate models and six emissions scenarios. We find that the two models project significantly different impacts to water temperature and streamflow. We also find significantly different impacts on the withdrawal allowed by thermal power plants from these two model projections, across scenarios and time.