Water use in data centers overlooked

Major technology companies are developing new technologies to conserve water in the cooling of their data centers. However, they often ignore the significant water consumption linked to both direct and indirect usage.

Cooling data centers requires water

Data centers generate a lot of heat, which is cooled through evaporation, leading to direct water use. Additionally, they require a large amount of electricity, and producing electricity also needs water. Fossil and nuclear power plants, for example, use water to create steam for their turbines, a factor often not considered by large cloud companies.

Indirect water use dominates

Meta, one of the few companies to publish detailed data, reported that indirect water use accounted for about 96 percent of the 21 billion gallons consumed in 2024, according to its sustainability report. The remaining 4 percent are used on-site, mainly in data centers, which also consume nearly all the electricity used by the company.

Estimates of water use vary widely

In the United States, it is difficult to determine exactly how much water this indirect consumption represents. A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates 211 billion gallons per year, while the NGO Ceres estimates up to 4,000 billion gallons. These amounts could supply between 2 and nearly 37 million American households for a year.

Arizona faces water shortages

A concrete example of the issue is the case of Arizona, a very dry state. In August, the federal government announced a 27 percent reduction in water allocation. Data centers in the region have therefore adopted air coolers to reduce their water use, though these systems are very electricity-intensive.

Tensions grow over data center expansion

This situation is described as a case of the tail wagging the dog, adding to the tensions surrounding the proliferation of data centers. Across the Atlantic, at least 45 projects, worth $68 billion, are blocked or delayed. In France, several data center projects are underway, including the Mistral and NVIDIA Campus IA project in Fouju, which will use refrigeration units to cool servers without affecting groundwater but will impact the electrical grid.