Abstract
As the world's largest proposed infrastructure program, China's Belt and Road Initiative will have significant implications for water security, sustainability, and the future of energy generation in Asia. Pakistan, a keystone of the Belt and Road Initiative, presents an ideal case for assessing the impacts of the Initiative's energy financing. We estimate the future water demands of seven new Chinese-financed, coal-fired power plants in Pakistan with a total capacity of 6600 MW. While these facilities may help address Pakistan's energy shortages, our results indicate that by 2055, climate change-induced water stress in Pakistan will increase by 36–92% compared to current levels, and the power plants' new water demands will amount to ∼79.68 million m3. Our findings highlight the need for China and the Belt and Road Initiative's destination countries to integrate resilience and sustainability efforts into energy infrastructure planning. Policy recommendations are offered to permit both sustainable development and responsible water resource management.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 1101-1109 |
| Number of pages | 9 |
| Journal | Energy Policy |
| Volume | 132 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Sep 2019 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This study was supported by the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars (PECS) program within the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University . We thank Dr. Yusuke Satoh at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis for providing the water stress data. We also acknowledge Phil Hannam of the World Bank, Johannes Urpelainen of Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Audrye Wong of Princeton University for helpful comments. Niko Wanders is supported by NWO 016.Veni.181.049. Codes for calculation of cooling water demand and trend analysis are hosted on: https://github.com/XiaogangHe/BRI-Pakistan . Codes for the PCR-GLOBWB model can be found at: https://github.com/UU-Hydro/PCR-GLOBWB_model . Codes for running the water temperature model are available at https://github.com/wande001/dynWat . Data are available upon request from X.H. The water temperature simulations are available upon request from N.W. This study was supported by the Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars (PECS) program within the Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University. We thank Dr. Yusuke Satoh at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis for providing the water stress data. We also acknowledge Phil Hannam of the World Bank, Johannes Urpelainen of Johns Hopkins SAIS, and Audrye Wong of Princeton University for helpful comments. Niko Wanders is supported by NWO 016.Veni.181.049. Codes for calculation of cooling water demand and trend analysis are hosted on:https://github.com/XiaogangHe/BRI-Pakistan. Codes for the PCR-GLOBWB model can be found at: https://github.com/UU-Hydro/PCR-GLOBWB_model. Codes for running the water temperature model are available at https://github.com/wande001/dynWat. Data are available upon request from X.H. The water temperature simulations are available upon request from N.W.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Princeton Energy and Climate Scholars | |
| Princeton Environmental Institute | |
| Princeton University | |
| Princeton Environmental Institute, Princeton University | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek | |
| International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis |
Keywords
- Belt and Road Initiative
- Coal
- CPEC
- Energy
- Sustainability
- Water resources
- Water security
- Water-energy nexus
