quote [ In the US and Europe, more than half of the water drawn from nature is used for power generation. This year’s heatwave has forced some of those power plants to shut down. The amount of water needed to produce electricity varies by a huge range: between 0 gallons (for sources like solar and wind) to 60,000 gallons for each megawatt-hour (MWh) of electricity produced (for sources like nuclear and coal).Concentrated solar and geothermal contribute less than 1% of the world’s electricity, whereas coal, natural gas, and nuclear contribute more than 75%. Hydropower uses a lot of water, too: 4,500 gallons per MWh ]