China's energy bases suffer from serious water shortages. To analyse the energy-water nexus under China's Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and the Well Below 2 Degrees (WBD2) target with a more detailed spatial resolution, a five-region China TIMES-W model incorporating water issues is developed. The results show the following: 1) Strict climate targets will require significant increases in non-fossil energy use. 2) Water withdrawal for energy use in the energy bases is expected to be 9.8 billion m(3) in 2050 in the WBD2 scenarios. The increased water withdrawal will mainly be caused by the deployment of water-intensive carbon mitigation technologies, such as coal/gas-fired power plants with CCS, concentrating solar power plants and biomass power plants, the water withdrawal for which will be 5.5 billion m(3). 3) The carbon intensities for the power sector will be in the range of 0.04-0.15 kg CO2/kWh while the water withdrawal intensities 0.33-1.38 m(3)/kWh by 2050 in the WBD2 scenario in different energy bases. Not only renewable energy potential but also available water resources should be considered in the development plan for energy bases. In addition, more R&D efforts on CCS with air cooling and concentrating solar power with air cooling should be encouraged. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.