One important discussion is whether SWI should account for water consumption only, or both water consumption and water withdrawal. Most existing assessment frameworks focus on water consumption because it represents water that is no longer available to the local watershed. However, water withdrawal tells a different story; it reflects the total amount of water taken from the environment, even if much of it is later returned. Some cooling technologies have high withdrawal but relatively low consumption, while others have the opposite pattern. Looking at only one metric may overlook important tradeoffs. The challenge is that these two metrics answer different questions, so we need to carefully evaluate whether SWI should report one, both, or guide on when each is appropriate.
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