July 29, 2014 – According to research by a group from Aarhus University (Denmark), Vermont Law School and CNA Corp. (United States), there will not be enough water in the world to quench the thirst of the world’s population and keep the current energy and power solutions going by the year 2040… if we continue doing what we are doing today.

The research also suggests that most power systems do not register how much water is actually being used to keep the systems going. Combining these results with projections about water shortage and the world population, many areas of the world will no longer have access to clean drinking water by 2020.

“This means that we’ll have to decide where we spend our water in the future. Do we want to spend it on keeping the power plants going or as drinking water? We don’t have enough water to do both,” insists professor Benjamin Sovacool from Aarhus University.

The researchers emphasize six general recommendations for decision-makers to follow to change this gloomy forecast:

• Improve energy efficiency
• Conduct research on alternative cooling cycles
• Register how much water power plants use
• Invest in wind energy
• Invest in solar energy
• Abandon fossil fuel facilities in all water-stressed places