October 14th, 2026
Courtesy of Bloomberg, a look at how it takes a lot of water to generate the power consumed by server farms: Data center developers have started touting new technologies that slash the amount of water needed to cool hot-running servers in drought-stressed places like Arizona. Those efforts, though, are not addressing the vast majority of […]
Read more »Nepal’s flood disaster puts its hydropower-first strategy, exports to the test
September 12th, 2026
Via Mongabay, a look at how Nepal’s flood disaster puts its hydropower-first strategy, exports to the test: Nepal’s long-held policy of harnessing hydroelectricity and using it for economic growth has met new challenges: potential catastrophic floods in the snow-fed rivers amid rising global temperatures. The Aug. 26 floods that originated on the Nepal-China border, and […]
Read more »August 18th, 2026
Courtesy of the California Policy Center, commentary on the watergy nexus of covering aqueducts and canals: Earlier this week, a respected YouTube channel covering the future of technology and energy released a video exploring the viability of solar panels covering California’s canals and aqueducts. The videos are hosted by Ricky Roy, a California-based mechanical engineer whose channel […]
Read more »California Needs Water and Clean Power. It Might Have a Fix for Both.
June 23rd, 2026
Via the New York Times, a look at a pilot program is building solar panels over irrigation canals to generate electricity. As a bonus, the shade prevents water from evaporating. In California, a sprawling 4,000-mile network of canals winds through citrus orchards and fields of tree nuts, delivering irrigation and drinking water to homes and farms […]
Read more »April 19th, 2026
Courtesy of The Diplomat, a look at how Uzbekistan is betting on nuclear power to secure its energy future – but it is doing so in one of the most water-stressed regions in the world The Uzbek government’s plan to build a nuclear power plant (NPP) in the Jizzakh region, alongside the creation of a centralized […]
Read more »Energy as a Water Issue
March 9th, 2026
Via UPenn’s Kleinman Center, a report on the water/energy nexus: Power generation in cities like El Paso, TX is unsustainably consuming local water resources. Fixing this will require retrofitting cooling towers at power plants. What images come to mind when you think of environmental pollution? Likely one of them is a power plant cooling tower. […]
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