WASHINGTON — The World Resources Institute has identified the global coal industry's water risks in a recent publication, according to a press release.
Coal-related industries like mining and power generation are extremely water intensive, noted the release.
An article in Cornerstone, the World Coal Association journal, and on WRI's blog by Tien Shiao and colleagues has found that more than half of the world's largest coal-producing and consuming countries face high to extremely high levels of water stress, the release reported, with Asia particularly vulnerable.
Other findings of the WRI analysis, continued the release, include: Five of the world's top coal producing/consuming countries are located on the Asian continent and each faces high to extremely high water stress, including India, Japan, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and South Korea; in China, 58 percent of existing coal-fired power generation capacity is located in high to extremely high water-stress areas and more capacity is planned in already stressed areas; and 70 percent of India's coal-fired capacity faces water stress or scarcity, with hundreds of gigawatts of proposed plants that would strain already vulnerable water supplies.
The blog post and infographics can be viewed here.
