Elec­tric­i­ty and water sys­tems are inex­tri­ca­bly linked through water demands for ener­gy gen­er­a­tion, and through ener­gy demands for using, mov­ing, and treat­ing water and waste­water. Cli­mate change may stress these inter­de­pen­den­cies, togeth­er referred to as the ener­gy-water nexus, by reduc­ing water avail­abil­i­ty for hydropow­er gen­er­a­tion and by increas­ing irri­ga­tion and elec­tric­i­ty demand for ground­wa­ter pump­ing, among oth­er feed­backs. Fur­ther, many cli­mate adap­ta­tion mea­sures to aug­ment water supplies—such as water recy­cling and desalination—are ener­gy-inten­sive. How­ev­er, water and elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem cli­mate vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and adap­ta­tions are often stud­ied in iso­la­tion, with­out con­sid­er­ing how mul­ti­ple inter­ac­tive risks may com­pound. This paper reviews the frag­ment­ed lit­er­a­ture and devel­ops a gen­er­al­ized frame­work for under­stand­ing these impli­ca­tions of cli­mate change on the ener­gy-water nexus. We apply this frame­work in a case study to quan­ti­fy end-cen­tu­ry direct cli­mate impacts on California’s water and elec­tric­i­ty resources and esti­mate the mag­ni­tude of the indi­rect cross-sec­toral feed­back of elec­tric­i­ty demand from var­i­ous water adap­ta­tion strate­gies. Our results show that increased space cool­ing demand and decreased hydropow­er gen­er­a­tion are the most sig­nif­i­cant direct cli­mate change impacts on California’s elec­tric­i­ty sec­tor by end-cen­tu­ry. In California’s water sec­tor, cli­mate change impacts direct­ly on sur­face water avail­abil­i­ty exceed demand changes, but have con­sid­er­able uncer­tain­ty, both in direc­tion and mag­ni­tude. Addi­tion­al­ly, we find that the ener­gy demands of water sec­tor cli­mate adap­ta­tions could sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect California’s future elec­tric­i­ty sys­tem needs. If the worst-case water short­age occurs under cli­mate change, water-con­serv­ing adap­ta­tion mea­sures can pro­vide large ener­gy sav­ings co-ben­e­fits, but oth­er ener­gy-inten­sive water adap­ta­tions may dou­ble the direct impacts of cli­mate change on the state’s elec­tric­i­ty resource require­ment. These results high­light the val­ue of coor­di­nat­ed adap­ta­tion plan­ning between the ener­gy and water sec­tors to achieve mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial solu­tions for cli­mate resilience.