Assessment of the Nexus between Groundwater Extraction and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Employing Aquifer Modelling

One of the main sources of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) is electricity consumption which is getting used for different purposes.Water pumping, especially, pumping from deep groundwater resources consumes a lot of energy. In arid and semi-arid areas, in which groundwater is the only source of water, water pumping is done for different purposes such as agricultural, industrial and urban uses. Kerman plain is one of these arid and semi-arid areas which is located in South East of Iran. Groundwater reliance and aquifer decline are the most prominent challenges that this area is faced with in recent years. This challenges increase the demand for more electricity consumption to pump water from the aquifer so that CO2 emissions will be increased. A large percentage of water extraction from the aquifer is used for agricultural purposes. In this paper, by modelling Kerman plain aquifer with MODFLOW software by using Geographical Information System (GIS) database and also studying height of groundwater table from 1999 to 2012, electricity energy consumption of groundwater extraction for agricultural, industrial and urban water supply is calculated and the CO2 emissions trends resulted from electricity energy consumption is evaluated. Then model results are examined for a business as usual (BAU) scenario of changes in water resources. As a result the amount of CO2 emitted from groundwater abstraction by three mentioned sectors is calculated for specified time horizon. Finally, some suggestions are presented for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the time horizon.