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CEF Launches a Multi-Media Story on China's Water Energy-Nexus

Since November 2010, CEF has been working with Circle of Blue on a new project called Choke Point: China, which explores the impact of China's energy development on water resources. This project parallels Circle of Blue's Choke Point: US study that was presented at a CEF meeting in September 2010. The report was launched on February 15th and can be found here: Choke Point: China

Choke Point: China — Confronting Water Scarcity and Energy Demand in the World's Fastest Growing Industrial Economy

New report explores escalating confrontation over resources with global implications

TRAVERSE CITY, MI (February 15, 2011) — Rapid economic growth, water scarcity, and soaring energy demand are forming a tightening noose that could choke off China's modernization, according to a new report by Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum that begins online publication today.

In the 12-part series, Choke Point: China, Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum find powerful evidence of a potentially ruinous confrontation between water and energy that is already visible and will grow more dire over the next decade.

Underlying China's new standing in the world, like a tectonic fault line, is an increasingly fierce competition between energy and water that threatens to upend China's progress, according to Choke Point: China. Simply put, say Chinese authorities and government reports, China's demand for energy, particularly for coal, is outpacing its freshwater supply.

Tight supplies of fresh water are nothing new in a nation where 80 percent of the rainfall and snowmelt occurs in the south, while just 20 percent of the moisture occurs in the mostly desert regions of the north and west. What's new is that China's surging economic growth is prompting the expanding industrial sector, which consumes 70 percent of the nation's energy, to call on the government to tap new energy supplies, particularly the enormous reserves of coal in the dry north.

The problem, say scholars and government officials, is that there is not enough water to mine, process, and consume those reserves, and still develop the modern cities and manufacturing centers that China envisions for the region. "Water shortage is the most important challenge to China right now, the biggest problem for future growth," said Wang Yahua, deputy director of the Center for China Study at Tsinghua University in Beijing. "It's a puzzle that the country has to solve."

The consequences of diminishing water reserves and rising energy demand have been a special focus of Circle of Blue's attention for more than a year. In 2010, in its Choke Point: U.S. series, Circle of Blue found that rising energy demand and diminishing freshwater reserves are two trends moving in opposing directions across America. Moreover, the speed and force of the confrontation is occurring in the places where growth is highest and water resources are under the most stress—California, the Southwest, the Rocky Mountain West, and the Southeast.

In December, Circle of Blue expanded its reporting to China. In collaboration with the China Environment Forum at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Circle of Blue dispatched teams of researchers and photographers to 15 Chinese provinces. Their assignment: to report on how the world's largest nation and fastest growing industrial economy is achieving its swift modernization despite scarce and declining reserves of clean fresh water.

In essence, Circle of Blue and the China Environment Forum completed a national tour of the extensive water circulatory system and vast energy production musculature that makes China go.

In a dozen chapters—starting this week and posted online every Tuesday through April—Choke Point: China reports in text, photographs, and interactive graphics the powerful evidence of the fierce contest between growth, water, and fuel that is virtually certain to grow more dire over the next decade.

Stripped to its essence, China's globally significant choke point is caused by three converging trends:

• Production and consumption of coal—the largest industrial consumer of water—has tripled since 2000. Government analysts project that China's energy companies will need to increase coal production by 30 percent by 2020.

• Fresh water needed for mining, processing, and consuming coal accounts for the largest share of industrial water use in China, a fifth of all the water consumed nationally. Though national conservation policies have helped to limit increases, water consumption nevertheless has climbed to record highs.

• China's total water resource, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, has dropped 13 percent since the start of the century. In other words China's water supply is 350 billion cubic meters (93 trillion gallons) less than it was at the start of the century. That's as much water lost to China each year as flows through the mouth of the Mississippi River in nine months. Chinese climatologists and hydrologists attribute much of the drop, to climate change, which is disrupting patterns of rain and snowfall.

Choke Point: China, though, is not necessarily a story of doom.

Circle of Blue and CEF found a powerful narrative in China in two parts, and never before told: First is how effectively the national and provincial governments enacted and enforced a range of water conservation and efficiency measures that enabled China to progress as far as it has.

Second is that despite the extensive efforts to conserve water, and to develop water-sipping alternatives like wind and solar energy, China still faces an enormous projected shortfall of water this decade to its energy-rich northern and western provinces. How government and industry leaders respond to this critical and unyielding choke point forms the central story line of the next era of China's unfolding development.

Choke Point: China is produced with support from the Energy Foundation, research assistance from Ningxia University, and interactive media from the Ball State University Department of Journalism and Immersive Learning Program.

Follow the weekly coverage at Circle of Blue, http://www.circleofblue.org

Subscribe to weekly or daily updates at: http://eepurl.com/ez7F

Expert sources
Keith Schneider
Senior Editor, Circle of Blue
keith@circleofblue.org
+1.231.920-0745

Jennifer Turner
Director, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars China Environment Forum
jennifer.turner@wilsoncenter.org
+1.202.691-4233

Contact
Circle of Blue
media@circleofblue.org
+1.202.351-6870 x110

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