Since tonight from 8:30-9:30 has been deemed this years 'Earth Hour' by the forces that be, I thought I might take the time to write a quick post about the water conservation that can be achieved through this event.
Well, I found some numbers from our friend the internet, and the answer is that like almost everything else, producing and supplying electricity to society uses a lot of water. It differs depending on the source of electricity. Here are some numbers that were found by the Virginia Water Resources Research Center (Source: Water Dependancy of Energy Production an Power Generation Systems by Tamim Younos, Rachelle Hill and Heather Poole. Available at: http://vwrrc.vt.edu/pdfs/specialreports/sr-46_water_dependency_of_energy.pdf)
To take these numbers and make them a bit more usable we'll have to do some math. Let's say that you use a regular incandescent 100 W light bulb. Over the period of 1 hour it will consume 100 watts per hour. Divide this by 1000 and we are left with the usage of 0.1 kilowatts per hour (kWh). Doing a bit more math, we can determine how much water is saved over one hour for use source of electricity:
Note: I realize I don't have any numbers here for wind-generated power. I haven't been able to find a source with that information as of yet, will post if I find some!
So, kudos of you out there that turned off a light, tv, computer or anything else for an hour today! This is only the information for one light bulb, you've probably conserved a lot more water than you think.
Ta-ta for now, will be writing a post discussing the different water-footprint site within the next couple days. There are a lot more than I realized, this research might prove to be a bit more daunting than previously thought!
Much love for the Water Warrior,
Erin
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