Evaporative cooling towers play an important role in green buildings by significantly reducing energy consumption when they supplement or replace traditional air conditioning systems, thereby reducing carbon footprint and operating costs. Although evaporative cooling is great at saving energy, it does consume some water, but the benefits on energy savings outweigh the water usage, which in some places is a scarce resource.
Water conservation is, therefore, a high priority in designing and operating water-cooled equipment and plays an important role in the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC’s) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification and other sustainability programs. LEED assigns credit points to reduce water usage.