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Coal and water use
Currently the existing five power stations in the Latrobe Valley use 125 billion litres of water, equivalent to a third of Melbourne’s water use annually.
They cannot operate without these huge amounts of water. What's more, the coal mining operations that feed our coal plants also require water.
Of course Victoria’s coal industry fuels our water shortage in a second way. It produces huge amounts of the greenhouse pollution that causes climate change. Research commissioned by Melbourne Water estimates climate change will reduce the average annual volume of water available through Melbourne’s water system by 8 percent in 2020, and 20 percent by 2050.
Also a worry is the use of geosequestration or CCS technology within the coal industry, which threatens to increase the volume of water used by the industry even further. The technology requires a third more water than conventional coal-fired power stations.
There is a clear incompatibility between Victoria’s dwindling water resources and the coal industry’s massive demand for water. However this does not appear to be taken into account in the Government’s coal related decisions.
The above image (taken from Google Earth) shows Hazelwood power station flanked by its open-cut coal mine above it and it's cooling pond beneath it.
Victoria’s coal-fired generators use significantly more water than their less polluting alternatives like combined cycle gas, renewable energy and energy efficiency. The table below shows that our most polluting coal-fired power stations also guzzle the most water.
Table 1. Typical annual freshwater consumption and CO2 intensity of power stations
Plant type |
Once through wet cooling, subcritical coal (eg Hazelwood) |
Closed cycle wet cooling, subcritical coal (eg Loy Yang A & B, Yallourn) |
Open cycle gas turbine |
Closed cycle once through gas turbnine |
Closed cycle dry cooling gas turbine |
| Typical annual freshwater consumption for a 1000 MW plant | 13 to 17 GL/year | 17 GL/year | 1 GL/year | 5 GL/year | 0.8 GL/year |
| CO2 intensity as generated | 884 tonne/GWh | 884 tonne/GWh | 513 tonne/GWh | 655 tonne/GWh | 363 tonne/GWh |
Table adapted from data in Smart, A. and A. Aspinall (2009) Water and the electricity generation industry: Implications of use.
For more on electricity generation and water use see this excellent report by the National Water Commission
