Virtual scarce water embodied in inter-provincial electricity transmission in China

Highlights: • Virtual water in inter-provincial electricity transmission in China is calculated. • A Water Stress Index is used to reflect relative scarcity of water consumption. • West Inner Mongolia is the largest exporter of scarce water. • Hebei, Beijing and Shandong are the three largest receivers of scarce water. - Abstract: Intra-national electricity transmission drives virtual water transfer from electricity production regions to electricity consumption regions. In China, the water-intensive thermoelectric power industry is expanding quickly in many water-scarce energy production hubs in northern and northwestern provinces. This study constructed a node-flow model of inter-provincial electricity transmission to investigate the virtual water and scarcity-adjusted virtual water (or virtual scarce water) embodied in the electricity transmission network. It is revealed that total inter-provincial virtual water transfer embodied in electricity transmission was 623 million m³ in 2011, equivalent to 12.7% of the national total thermoelectric water consumption. The top three largest single virtual water flows are West Inner Mongolia-to-Beijing (44 million m³), East Inner Mongolia-to-Liaoning (39 million m³), and Guizhou-to-Guangdong (37 million m³). If the actual volumes of consumptive water use are translated into scarcity-adjusted water consumption based on Water Stress Index, West Inner Mongolia (81 million m³), Shanxi (63 million m³) and Ningxia (30 million m³) become the top three exporters of virtual scarce water. Many ongoing long-distance electricity transmission projects in China will enlarge the scale of scarce water outflows from northwestern regions and potentially increase their water stress.