It’s smart to include water when looking at energy conservation in addition to heat, hydro, and waste to keep track of energy consumption. Water, especially freshwater from rivers and lakes, is a source of energy that is often dismissed as a valuable energy source and resource because it had always been plentiful in Canada. That means water usage has been free, or cheap. Yet, freshwater is threatened by greater evaporation caused by the rapidly warming climate. Higher temperatures have also reduced the amount of snow and ice that feed the freshwater bodies. We’re at a critical point: do we preserve, or run dry? How will water scarcity affect the Alberta tar sands? What about the nuclear reactors in Ontario?
Water is life. That is what my mother said. She grew up on a farm in Alberta, and knew first-hand how important it is to have water. Without water, all living beings, including humans, die. But, there is a lot of competition for water as a source of energy. She saw what happened to the water when it was used as an energy source by the oil company that offered a steady source of revenue when it drilled an oil well on the family farm. Their land was ideal because it was near the Redwater River whose water was used to pump the oil out of the ground for free. That negatively impacted the water from the river and their well as the water went from pleasant in taste and smell to vile. The oil company took more than oil. The drop in the river’s water level was substantial, and the land around the oil well was ruined.
Likewise, the tar sands operators get free freshwater from the mighty Athabasca River to mine the oil. To do so, all that Alberta requires is a provincial licence.
The amount of freshwater used by the tar sands operators is substantial. In 2015, it took 3.1 barrels of water from the Athabasca River to produce 1 barrel of crude oil. In 2012, the most recent available data, 187 million cubic metres of freshwater were taken from the Athabasca that was equal to 4.4% of the river’s annual flow; or equivalent to the water usage of 1.7 million Canadians. That sounds insignificant, but that percentage was expected to double over the next decade. Most likely it was quickly exceeded.
Alberta also does not require the tar sands operators to clean their toxic wastewater, so it’s stored indefinitely in tailings ponds. In 2020, the Alberta government officially admitted that these tailings ponds have been leaking millions of litres of toxic wastewater.
According to Environmental Defence, as of May 2024, the Alberta government has allowed 1.4 trillion litres of toxic industrial waste to accumulate in tailing ponds for over five decades that cover an area of over 300 sq. km, or the equivalent to 2.6 times the size of the city of Vancouver.
If the tar sands companies had to pay for the freshwater, they would have to conserve this valuable resource, otherwise their operating costs would be unsustainable.
That day may come sooner than later. The source of the Athabasca River is the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park, which has been melting rapidly over the past few decades but has been dramatically accelerating. Today, there is but a small patch of ice at the top of the mountain that will be completely melted in the next couple of years, leaving a large gravel field, and a shrinking once-mighty river that will not be sustainable for oil, or life.
In addition to the numerous government subsidies the tar sand operators have been receiving, they’re also getting free water, and free waste production and storage. You’d think that after more than a century of getting government subsidies, they’d be weaned off by now.
Another big freshwater consumer in energy generation is nuclear. Like the tar sands operators, the nuclear power operators get free freshwater.
Nuclear reactors have been producing electricity commercially in Canada since the early 1960’s to fuel the Canada-US Auto Pact. Today, 22 reactors produce about 15% of Canada’s electricity. The rest of the electricity is sold to the U.S.
The Nuclear Energy Institute estimates that one nuclear reactor requires between 1,514 and 2,725 litres of water per Mwh, or billions of litres of water per year, and all this water requires filtering.
Located on Lake Huron, the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station has 8 reactors, and is the biggest in Canada with a capacity of 6,232 MW. If the amount of water needed per MW is on average about 2,000 litres,, that means Bruce would need 12.5 million litres of water to operate per year. The wastewater from nuclear reactors is a problem because it is too hot.
Except for 2 nuclear reactors in Canada, all are located on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes account for 21% of the world’s freshwater, and they also provide drinking water to 30 million people – mostly Americans.
If one were to think that the Great Lakes would never run out of water, think again.
We have less snow now than normal, and our summers are hotter and dryer than normal so the water evaporation is greater. Consider what is happening with Kluane Lake in the Yukon, where I was this summer.
Kluane National Park and Reserve is home to Canada’s highest peaks and largest icefields, and Kluane Lake is the largest lake in the Yukon at 408 km2 and 81 km long, but Kluane Lake is already a victim of climate change. When I was there, the water was a good distance away from its boundaries and the water looked shallow. The nearby mountain tops were mostly bare of snow, and the weather was hot.
This was not what I was expecting. When backpacking the Chilkoot Trail in 2006, I asked a seasoned backpacker what was the most beautiful trail. Without a hesitation it was Kluane. Kluane Lake had been famous for its plentiful large-bodied whitefish and lake trout in the beautiful blue water surrounded by a magnificent scenery of snow covered peaks.
What happened to Kluane Lake is that it is dying. Up until 2016, Kluane was fed by the Slims River, which in turn was fed by the glacier meltwater of the Kaskawulsh Glacier, but the glacier had retreated 655 meters between 1956 and 2007 that was attributed to climate change. Then, in May 2016 there was a rapid melting that culminated in the dramatic 4-days event when the Slims River disappeared from Kluane Lake. The voluminous glacial meltwaters were suddenly diverted from one side of North America to the other – from the Bering Sea to the Gulf of Alaska.
The competition for water as a source of life or energy will only get more intense if this valuable resource and energy source is not preserved soon before it is too late. At a minimum, water usage should not be free, otherwise we all lose.