Kidney failure in cats, appears to at least be related to insufficient liquid in their diet. Since cats derive most of their fluids from their food, rather than from explicit drinking, they have a low drive to drink water.
So, I think that whilst dry cat food arguably does increase the risk of kidney failure, it's not necessarily the direct cause, but a factor. Mostly dry cat food and water, however well intended, is probably not a good approach.
A lot of relatively cheap dry cat food also seems to not be particularly healthy for cats anyway, having a large proportion of carbohydrates, which don't naturally exist in most cat's diets.
I've only ever fed dry cat food to my cats, as a small overall proportion of their diet, mostly when I can't avoid it. If I leave Zev alone for a few days, I've got a programmable dried cat food dispenser. I do leave her wet cat food, but in hot weather this is not going to stay palatable or healthy for very long, so dry cat food is the only reasonable approach.
I do aim for the premium dry cat food, in these situations, which explicitly details high and good quality protein as the majority of its constituents, and low carbohydrates.