So much great material in this new study from Josh Rhodes PhD and his team at Ideasmiths. (Josh is also with the U of Texas at Austin, and is a well known and respected expert on grids nationally)
The Impact of Renewables in ERCOT:
Avoided water withdrawals
Figure 5 shows that, if there had not been any renewables on the ERCOT grid, power plants would have withdrawn between approximately 272 billion to 1,300 billion more gallons of water per year, or 8.6 trillion gallons total from 2010 to August 2022. For reference, 1,300 billion gallons is the annual use of about 14.2 million Texans19.