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~ ~ ~. .)? POTENTIAL CONSUMPTION OF.WATER'BY EMERGING ENERGY TECHNOLOGIES ~) 00 ~ ~ Along with the future conventional water uses described above, consumption of water by oil shale and coal gasification facilities may occur. The amount of water consumed will be a function of potential future levels of EET development and the water use characteristcs of the EETs. Potential Emerging Energy Technology Developments, The DOE has directed that two estimates of potential levels of EET development be employed for the purposes of this assessment. These estimates came from one of the many national energy demand studies which DOE and its predecessors have conducted in recent years. The estimates were derived by projecting national energy demand and then assuming, more or less arbitrarily, that a certain portion of that demand would be satisfied by synthetic fuels development. National levels of synfuel production were then disaggregated to a regional level using another series of assumptions. The resulting estimates, referred to as the baseline case and accelerated synfuel case, were disaggregated only to ASAs. Thus for the purposes of this assessment, additional assumptions had to be made in .order to generate the siting pattern to be assessed (see table 6.2). However, the availability of water was not considered when the siting pattern was being chosen. As one can see, the postulated levels of EET development, especially in the accelerated synfuel case, are extremely large. Indeed, one doubts that they are reasonable representations of the potential for oil shale and coal gasification development by the year 2000 (although the baseline case may be a plausible projection of development by that date given the events which were in progress. when this'report went to press).. This judg- ment is borne out by the fact that the annual compound growth rates that would accompany the postulated levels of EET development would range from 4 to 8 percent. These rates are so large as to strongly suggest,that it would be exceedingly difficult for the regional economy of the Upper Basin to bear $uch development over only a 20-year time span (i.e., 1980-2000). Thus, these DOE projections are more properly viewed as depicting levels of coal gasification and oil shale development which, if they occur at all, are not apt to be attained until after the turn of the century.. wnile this assessment is directed at potential oil shale and coal gasification developments, conventional energy conversion processes may also be expected to expand. ,This fact is explicitly recogn~zed in the "without EET" scenarios, which depict increasing amounts of consumption by the thermal electric sector. In terms of increases in the megawatts (MW) of installed generating capacity, these are projected to range ~