Data center developers are increasingly tapping into freshwater resources to quench the thirst of data centers, which is putting nearby communities at risk.
Large data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons per day, equivalent to the water use of a town populated by 10,000 to 50,000 people.
With larger and new AI-focused data centers, water consumption is increasing alongside energy usage and carbon emissions.
Novel technologies like direct-to-chip cooling and immersion cooling can reduce water and energy usage by data centers.

Data centers have a thirst for water, and their rapid expansion threatens freshwater supplies. Only 3% of Earth’s water is freshwater, and only 0.5% of all water is accessible and safe for human consumption. Freshwater is critical for survival. On average, a human being can live without water for only three days. Increasing drought and water shortages are reducing water availability. Meanwhile, data center developers are increasingly tapping into surface and underground aquifers to cool their facilities.

Data center water usage closely parallels energy usage and carbon emissions. As data centers use more energy for their typical data center operations and to meet AI requests, they consume larger amounts of water to cool their processor chips, so as to avoid overheating and potential damage. Similarly, as energy use increases in data centers, so do carbon emissions.

A medium-sized data center can consume up to roughly 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling purposes, equivalent to the annual water usage of approximately 1,000 households. Larger data centers can each “drink” up to 5 million gallons per day, or about 1.8 billion annually, usage equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people. Together, the nation’s 5,426 data centers consume billions of gallons of water annually. One report estimated that U.S. data centers consume 449 million gallons of water per day and 163.7 billion gallons annually (as of 2021). A 2016 report found that fewer than one-third of data center operators track water consumption. Water consumption is expected to continue increasing as data centers grow in number, size, and complexity.

According to scientists at the University of California, Riverside, each 100-word AI prompt is estimated to use roughly one bottle of water (or 519 milliliters). This may not sound like much, but billions of AI users worldwide enter prompts into systems like ChatGPT every minute. Large language models require many energy-intensive calculations, necessitating liquid cooling systems.