4 ms·

Freshwater withdrawals per capita in the US (which includes agricultural exports and animal feed such as alfalfa sent to Saudi Arabia) are around 1550 cubic met

• iudqnolq 3y ago
  That equates to around 4,000 liters per person per day. Freshwater withdrawals is a very broad category, it also includes water released to turn hydropower turbines. But it's also unfair to compare across countries without taking into account water sent between countries in the form of produce and products.
  • Veserv 3y ago
    You were quibbling about how 1,000 liters per day does not adequately account for all usage. Freshwater withdrawals is on average going to be a overestimate and the US is one of the worst outliers with significant agricultural exports which are one of the largest contributors to differential water withdrawals. Despite this, it would only be $2.00 per day for a fully desalinated water supply even if we safely overestimate usage. Despite it being 4x higher than the person you replied to said, that is still incredibly cheap.
    • iudqnolq 3y ago
      I agree with everything you say (with the assumption the person I replied to has the correct price, which I know nothing about)
    • Hxnd 3y ago
      >Despite it being 4x higher than the person you replied to said $0.5 was per household. $2.00 was per capita. So 10x higher.
  • codedokode 3y ago
    4,000 liters per day is too much. It is 10 full bathtubs. Do Americans leave the tap open or do they take a bath 10 times per day?
    • ateng 3y ago
      Agriculture and industry can use _a lot_ of water. Likely the 4000l figure includes that.
    • Veserv 3y ago
      It accounts for the water used in agriculture, industry, power generation, etc. Those uses completely dominate domestic water usage including for aesthetic purposes such as lawns and golf courses (e.g. around 80% of water usage in California is for agriculture and power generation if I remember correctly with only around 5-10% for all domestic usage). As you will note, the average German consumes 1,000 liters per day by the same metric which is 2.5 baths per day which is obviously unreasonable if we were only considering direct domestic water consumption. To be fair, the agriculture is being grown to feed people, so it is fair to include the consumed produce in each person’s water footprint. This is further exacerbated by growing animal feed for animals that are consumed which is even more “water inefficient”. The US is a major food exporter, so it is over-represented in these sorts of numbers, but it is a fair approximation to within a factor of maybe 2-3x of the embodied water consumption of the average American.
    • iudqnolq 3y ago
      Maybe my comment wasn't clear. That figure isn't great - we just divided the total amount of freshwater diverted to some kind of use by the population. That even includes letting water flow past hydropower turbines. It's obviously too big. But not counting the water used to put food on your table is too small. So this establishes some bounds.
• pfdietz 3y ago
  > 1550 cubic meters per year This is an interesting number. Recently, I saw complaints that green hydrogen is impractical because it would use too much water. But if all the per capita energy use in the US went to electrolysis, it would use about 1% of this water per capita (and, of course, green hydrogen would be only a fraction of total energy use, due to all the preferred direct uses of electrical energy.)
  • pbhjpbhj 3y ago
    When you burn the hydrogen you get pure water back too.
  • slashdev 3y ago
    That just goes to show that people will complain about anything instead of applying their brain. There are plenty of valid objections to hydrogen as a fuel, but water use is a total non issue. Not only does it use so little, but when you get energy back out of the hydrogen, the waste product is water again. It’s literally a renewable cycle.