Introduction  Liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal usually consume a lot of water resources and electric power to gasify and transport the gas. Reasonable selection of water intake and drainage schemes is of great significance to save energy and reduce carbon emissions.

  Method  In order to make full use of the thermal drainage resources from the neighboring existing power plants, three different water intake and drainage schemes were proposed: Simultaneously draw and drain water from the ocean, simultaneously draw and drain water from the power plant open channel, and draw water from the power plant open channel and drain water to the ocean. All water intake and drainage schemes were compared and discussed on their engineering construction schemes, economic, and social benefits, etc.

  Result  The results of the comparison and selection of the schemes show that compared with the traditional scheme of taking and drainage water from the ocean, those of taking water from the power plant could reduce the infrastructure investment by about 5.6%, reduce the water consumption of open rack vaporizer (ORV) by about 41%, and save about 5.471 million kWh of annual operating power consumption, which was equivalent to reducing carbon dioxide emissions from 1 000 MW ultra-supercritical generator sets by at least 3 548.3 tons per year. In addition, this water intake and drainage scheme also greatly saves the sea area and reduces the impact of water intake and drainage on marine ecology.

  Conclusion  The new water intake and drainage scheme proposed in this study has good social, economic, and environmental benefits and provides some guidance for other projects to fully integrate energy, further improves energy and water conservation, and reduces carbon emissions from LNG terminal.