No, I’m not talking about the glorious watercooling seen below.

An interactive map published recently by IEEE as part of their Water vs. Energy Special Report highlights an aspect of energy consumption that is often overlooked by the media: the tradeoff between energy production and water supply. As the map says, “Just having water and energy doesn’t protect a place from water and energy conflicts.” The map shows such conflicts around the globe, from China to Pennsylvania. In each, increased energy production results in problems with the water supply. The bit to take away is that each energy source has a hidden cost in the impact it will have on available water.

An interesting corollary to the energy-water tradeoff is that each Google search consumes about half a milliliter of water. At 300 million searches per day, Google users worldwide are consuming not just vast amounts of energy, but also roughly 150,000 liters of water daily.

And of course, it isn’t just Google. With the worldwide energy budget for IT growing, the water impact of PCs, laptops, and servers is beginning to reach significant levels. Implementing best practices, such as purchasing PCs and (soon) servers with the Energy Star label, setting appropriate sleep policies to power down inactive computers, and (of course) running Granola to save energy on active computers, will help restrict the growth of the environmental impact of computing, even as the number of computers worldwide increases.