Fossil Fuel Giants Guzzling World's Water as Poor Go Thirsty: UN
An unrelenting increase in energy production, including unconventional methods such as tar sands extraction and fracking, will severely damage the world's already dwindling water supply, the UN warned on Friday.
"There is an increasing potential for serious conflict between power generation, other water users and environmental considerations," says the World Water Development Report 2014: Water and Energy (pdf), published on the eve of World Water Day.
The energy sector, which has "great political clout," the report states, is set to consume an unfair share of this limited resource, "despite ongoing progress in the development of renewables." The report continues:
The overall evolution of the global energy mix appears to remain on a relatively fixed path: that of continued reliance on fossil fuels. Oil and gas extraction yields high volumes of ‘produced water’, which comes out of the well along with the oil and gas. Produced water is usually very difficult and expensive to treat. Unconventional oil and gas production is generally more water intensive than conventional oil and gas production.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2014/03/21-2
