I'm Dutch. The notion of water shortages in that country is ridiculous. There's plenty of water. There is a shortage of ground water that is being used for a lot of things including intensive agriculture and drinking water. Ground water is nice because it is there and typically very clean so you don't need to do a lot of filtering before you can use it. However, using ground water at the current rate is not sustainable because we are depleting it at a rate that is higher than it is being topped up by nature. But there's plenty of other water: rivers, lakes, etc. We actually spend lots of energy pumping water out to sea to keep the land dry. Perfectly good fresh water that we have way too much off. Way more than we will ever need. The reason people are trying to get consumers to save water in the Netherlands is very simple: it's cheaper than making the necessary investments to scale up water production.
Cleaning up water takes a bit of energy and so does heating it up. So yes, it has a price. However, we know how get clean energy now. So, that's a solvable problem. And it's not that expensive even. High gas prices are currently causing people to think very hard about how to upgrade their houses. The real money savings are house heating. My parents switched off their gas heating system a few weeks ago after being faced with 1000 euro monthly gas bills. Only a fraction of that is showers. It's a recently renovated house that is pretty well insulated. The issue is simply that gas is really expensive now. Luckily, they have a wood pallet stove. Also not cheap to run but a lot cheaper. The real solution for them will be a heat pump and some access to renewable power. And the financial incentives for that are there now in the form of high gas prices.
Cleaning up water takes a bit of energy and so does heating it up. So yes, it has a price. However, we know how get clean energy now. So, that's a solvable problem. And it's not that expensive even. High gas prices are currently causing people to think very hard about how to upgrade their houses. The real money savings are house heating. My parents switched off their gas heating system a few weeks ago after being faced with 1000 euro monthly gas bills. Only a fraction of that is showers. It's a recently renovated house that is pretty well insulated. The issue is simply that gas is really expensive now. Luckily, they have a wood pallet stove. Also not cheap to run but a lot cheaper. The real solution for them will be a heat pump and some access to renewable power. And the financial incentives for that are there now in the form of high gas prices.