Program Announcement
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012
Freshwater Use by US Power Plants: Implications for National Water Resources
Speaker: Kristen Averyt, Western Water Assessment
Take the average amount of water flowing over Niagara Falls in a minute. Now triple it. That’s almost how much water power plants in the United States take in for cooling each minute, on average. In 2005, the nation’s thermoelectric power plants—which boil water to create steam, which in turn drives turbines to produce electricity—withdrew as much water as farms did, and more than four times as much as all U.S. residents. That means lighting rooms, powering computers and TVs, and running appliances requires more water, on average, than the total amount we use in our homes—washing dishes and clothes, showering, flushing toilets, and watering lawns and gardens.
Here, the results of a new report--
Freshwater Use by US Power Plants -- will be presented. The report is the first systematic assessment of both the effects of power plant cooling on water resources across the United States, and the quality of information available to public- and private-sector decision makers. The impacts of water use for electricity generation on water stress across the entire US will be discussed, as well as preliminary results of new research investigating the energy-water nexus in the Southwestern US (the Colorado River Basin and California), and resilience of the energy and water systems to future drought.
About the Speaker:
Kristen Averyt is deputy director of the Western Water Assessment at the University of Colorado–Boulder, a program sponsored by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) designed to connect climate science with decision making across the western United States. Before joining the University of Colorado in 2008, Dr. Averyt was a staff scientist for the Nobel Prize–winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In 2005 she was a NOAA congressional fellow, where she worked as a legislative aid in the U.S. Senate. Dr. Averyt has B.S. degrees in oceanography and chemistry, and received a Masters in Chemistry as a Fulbright Fellow in New Zealand. She is trained as a geochemist specializing in paleoclimatology, and received her Ph.D. from Stanford University. Her current research includes investigations of the intersection of energy, water, and climate in the West, and evaluations of strategies for adapting to climate change.
Denver Water - 3rd Floor Board Room
Please visit
Denver Water's website for directions to their main office (the building outlined in red with the blue Denver Water symbol).
Lunch at 12:00, Program at 12:30
PLEASE RSVP if you plan to attend and please specify whether or not you will be eating the buffet lunch. Any RSVPs that do not also request a lunch will not be included in the buffet lunch count. All lunch orders must be in by 10am Friday. You may brown bag it or a buffet lunch will be provided by Denver Water catering service for a cost of $10.00 payable at the door.
All lunch RSVPs that are no-shows will be charged.
Please contact the Colorado Section at:
rsvp@ awracolorado.org
or Kim Albright at Denver Water at:
(303-628-6516)
with reservations not later than 10am on FRIDAY, January 27th, 2011.
PLEASE try to RSVP if you will attend, even if you will not be eating the lunch buffet, by Monday so that we may set up the room accordingly.
Due to the financial burden that is placed on the Section, all those who RSVP for the buffet lunch will be charged.
