Using the West’s Water to Extract the West’s Energy: How Much is Too Much?

Water and energy have been inexorably linked in human history at least back to ancient Babylonia, where windmills helped power irrigation as early as 1700 BC. Since then, that relationship has become one of the great axioms of the industrial age – that is, it takes great volumes of water to extract and convert energy resources, and often great energy resources to move and treat water. And in a world in which such resources are under increased pressure, the interconnection between the two – known as the water-energy nexus to some—may never have been more pronounced. That is particularly true in the arid West, where rapidly increasing populations are expected to more than double the need for more power by 2030, which will compete with agriculture and growing municipal use for freshwater supplies...more