WindLift Power

As I try to get my head around this water-energy relationship I have been poking around Google. Low and behold I find a well researched paper from California, signed off by Governor Arnold titled, “California’s Water-Energy Relationship” (PDF link is www.energy.ca.gov/2005publications/CEC-700-2005-011/CEC-700-2005-011-SF.PDF ). The paper is pretty solid, but I think I found one glaring error. In the Executive summary they claim that “water-related energy use consumes 19 percent of its (the state’s) electricity, 30 percent of its natural gas, and 88 billion gallons of its diesel fuel every year” I’m pretty sure they meant 88 million gallons of diesel fuel. 88 billion gallons would mean that at around $3 per gallon the 38 million people in California spend almost $7,000/year just on diesel fuel for water-related purposes. Since diesel fuel is mainly used for agricultural pumping in remote areas this just can’t be right.

Correction: I just dug a little deeper in the report and they used 88 million as their number, so I was right. Digging deeper also turned up some other good data. From what I can tell the average person in Southern California expends over 40% of their energy budget just pumping water… Forget the SUVs, if you live in Southern California and own a swimming pool, or take long hot showers you are making Al Gore cry.

Here is another link to a PDF that has a nice pie chart of the electrical distribution.
aceee.org/conf/06et/tp3-5_jenkinsintro.pdf