The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed a new rule, the Clean Power Plan (CPP), under the Clean Air Act to control carbon dioxide emissions from existing stationary electric power plants. In order to better understand the potential impacts of the rule for water consumption and withdrawals in Texas, a state that is experiencing on-going drought, we apply a power generation policy model that accounts for thermoelectric cooling water to evaluate water use along with other economic and environmental indicators. We explore two scenarios, a Baseline and the implementation of the CPP. We find the CPP could reduce water consumption in 2029 by 21 percent compared to 2012.

Impacts of EPA’s Clean Power Plan on electricity generation and water use in Texas

249th National Meeting (2015)

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.