Google pledges water replenishment as AI data centers face drought zone scrutiny

AI has a water problem. Google thinks it has a fix

Lauren Feiner is a senior policy reporter at The Verge, covering the intersection of Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill. She spent 5 years covering tech policy at CNBC, writing about antitrust, privacy, and content moderation reform. In the face of widespread backlash to the AI data center buildout throughout the US, Google is touting its efforts to minimize the environmental impact by actually increasing water for local communities. The company laid out five commitments around water use in a new blog post published Wednesday, including a goal to replenish more water than it uses at its data centers by 2030. Google also said it will invest in local water infrastructure, identify alternative water sources to power its facilities, and be transparent about its water use overall. "We're just one of dozens of players in the space," Google's global head of infrastructure and sustainability Ben Townsend told The Verge in an interview. "We think it's really important to sort of put a blueprint out there that communities can reference, so if somebody else comes and says, 'we'd like to build a data center there,' a community can say, 'well, here are five different things that really put the community and the watershed first. Are you doing these? Are you doing one of them? All of them? None of them? And if not, why?" The commitments come amid growing opposition to the rapid data center buildout helping to power the extensive energy needs of AI. Google parent company Alphabet recently said it wants to raise $80 billion from stock sales to fund its buildout for the technology. A recent Gallup poll found that more than 70 percent of Americans oppose the idea of a data center being built in their area. Half of respondents cited data centers' impact on environmental resources as a motivator behind their opposition, including 18 percent who cited excess water use as an issue. AI data centers require vast amounts of water for cooling, with a recent study finding that the technology used as much water annually as people drink from water bottles worldwide. Google's prior estimates of its own water use for AI have been misleading, according to some researchers, who say they omit indirect water usage. The widespread resource concerns have driven a wave of commitments across the industry to limit water usage and prevent data centers from driving up consumer energy prices. But Google's Townsend defended the company's record thus far. "To the best of our ability, we are accounting for the offsite water footprint," Townsend said, "and I think we've made significant progress in reducing or eliminating the water footprint of that supply chain through our waterless renewable energy investments." In the blog post, Google's vice president of global infrastructure Bikash Koley says water usage at data centers can lower overall energy use. "In many places, water cooling can reduce data center energy use by approximately 10% compared to air cooling," Koley writes. "The aggregate water consumption of data centers is small -- U.S. data centers use less than 1% of the water that Americans use on their lawns annually -- but we are focused on protecting local water resources in all aspects of our data center operations." Koley says Google will be able to replenish more water than it consumes in the next four years by investing in projects that improve things like irrigation and infrastructure. It promises to keep reporting its annual water use and look for alternative sources like reclaimed wastewater, as it's done in one Georgia county. The company also announced $17 million to support new water stewardship projects across seven states. Those who worry about data centers sucking up all their water have valid concerns, Townsend said, though he says they might use less water than people think. "It would be a real disservice to the space to say there's only misconceptions out there. That's not true," Townsend said. But, he added, the data center sector doesn't use as much water as people might think, and now is the time to invest to make sure "that data center water use doesn't become a problem."

Most new U.S. AI data centers are being built in drought zones -- two-thirds of 809 planned projects set for areas with water shortages

New water-demand analysis puts data center cooling at roughly 4% of AI's footprint, with fabs and power generation taking the rest. About two-thirds of the 809 data centers planned across the U.S. are slated for land that has been in drought over the past year, an analysis from The Guardian found this week. The research claims that 517 data centers are set to be built in areas classified as drought-stricken in the last year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Integrated Drought Information System. According to the report, data center cooling accounts for only about 4% of the additional water AI will demand by 2050, according to a January report from Xylem and Global Water Intelligence, while power generation takes roughly 54% and semiconductor fabrication about 42%. A UN University report published last week reached a similar split, putting 2025 data center electricity use at about 448 TWh. The chips inside the racks, and the power to run them, account for the rest. A modern logic fab consumes between 2 million and 10 million gallons a day, and chipmaking can't use ordinary water. Producing 1,000 gallons of the ultrapure water required by fabs takes roughly 1,400 to 1,600 gallons of municipal supply, so the input is lossy before a single wafer is etched. TSMC's three Phoenix fabs, for example, are projected to draw a combined 16.4 million gallons a day once complete, in the fourth-driest state in the country. The company offsets much of that through on-site reclamation, rated at 85%, climbing toward 90%, but it's still drawing water from an area where it's already in short supply. Data center operators routinely note that the sector uses a fraction of what agriculture does, but that's only accounting for one of three legs. Only counting cooling excludes the fab and generation demand created by the same infrastructure, which is where most of the growth capacity is concentrated. A data center and the fab supplying its accelerators can sit in the same drought area and pull from the same groundwater, but only one of them will end up showing in the cooling figures. A potential fix will be sealed, direct-to-chip liquid cooling. Nvidia rates its GB200 NVL72 system at up to 300 times the water efficiency of air cooling, but that figure covers the cooling loop alone. Those racks pull 120 kW to 140 kW each, and the Vera Rubin platform, arriving later this year, pushes a single rack toward 600 kW. More power per rack means more generation, and thermal and gas-fired generation is itself water-intensive, so rack-level water savings reappear at the power plant. Meta's proposed Hyperion data center in Louisiana is one example. Closed-loop cooling here will be paired with the output of roughly 10 gas-fired plants, which consume water of their own to generate that electricity. So, on-site cooling water usage falls while the combined draw of cooling and generation rises, and as rack power scales toward Rubin's 600 kW, that combined figure will climb faster still. Several states have started legislating around cooling, including California, Michigan, and Iowa, which are weighing mandatory water-use reporting. South Carolina and Kansas may require closed-loop systems, and New York lawmakers have floated an outright data center moratorium. Each measure targets the visible 4%, and leaves the fabrication and generation demand that drives most of AI's water growth untouched. Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Google pledges to replenish more water than it uses at data centers by 2030 - Engadget

Google is expanding its water stewardship commitments, including investments in replenishment projects, to provide more water than it consumes at its data centers by 2030. The company now has 165 stewardship projects across 97 watersheds, which are expected to replenish 19 billion gallons a year by 2030. Google says that's more than double its consumption for 2024 and would allow the company to use more water over the coming years and still achieve its goal. Based on general online sentiment, such as Erin Brockovich's recent crowdsourced AI data center map, people living near these data centers are mostly worried about how the facilities could affect their water supply. A mid-size data center uses around 300,000 gallons of water a day, which is equivalent to what 1,000 households use in the US. Google runs data centers for Search, YouTube, Drive cloud storage, Gmail and other services. And, yes, its data centers also power its increasing number of AI features and tools. The company, like many others, uses water to cool down servers, as it uses less energy than air cooling. In its announcement, Google says data centers in the US collectively use one percent of the water that Americans use on their lawns annually. However, people are unhappy about AI data centers near their communities using water at all, as they feel AI is unnecessary in the first place. For this expansion in particular, it's spending $17 million to support new projects in Georgia, where it will help enhance the wetlands at the Flint River Wildlife Management Area, and in Iowa, where it will help local farmers convert 5,000 acres into perennial hay and pasture systems. It's also supporting projects that use native plants to treat stormwater and mitigate flooding in Michigan, that will establish a 1-mile corridor along the Zumbro River in Minnesota to improve water quality and will restore 98 acres adjacent to the Blue River as a wetland in Missouri. It will support water infrastructure projects in Nebraska and Texas, as well. In addition to investing in replenishment projects, Google is making a $500 million investment into updating public water, wastewater and water reuse infrastructure. It also pledged to use air cooling if its assessment reveals that a location's water source is at high risk, as well as to pursue reclaimed solutions, such as using treated wastewater from the sewers. In February, for instance, Google reported that it was building data centers in Texas that use "advanced air-cooling technology" instead to limit water consumption.

Majority of US's new AI datacenters to be built on drought-hit land

Guardian analysis finds facilities to be built in some of the driest areas as outcry grows over water needed to power AI A record-shattering drought has racked much of the US. But the artificial intelligence industry is pushing ahead regardless, with the majority of planned datacenters set to be built in drought-ridden locations, a Guardian analysis has found. About two-thirds of upcoming datacenters, which typically require a large amount of water to operate, are set to be built in places that have been among the driest in the country over the past year. Of 809 planned datacenters, 517 are in locations that have been in drought conditions throughout the past year, according to data from Cleanview and the federal government, which grades drought across four levels of severity. A similar proportion of existing datacenters are already situated in drought-affected areas. More than 60% of the contiguous US is currently at varying stages of drought, the largest expanse for spring in modern records, with a particularly severe lack of rain and snow in the south-east and west desiccating croplands and raising fears of a disastrous wildfire season. Scientists have determined that the climate crisis, caused by the burning of fossil fuels, is worsening the duration and intensity of droughts in the US. But a stampede of new datacenters are adding extra demands via their hefty energy and water requirements. Large datacenters, some the size of small towns, can require up to 5m gallons of water a day, equivalent to the water use of up to 50,000 people, in order to provide cooling to arrays of humming networked computers. Overall, the multiplying datacenters across the US are set to demand as much as 73 billion gallons of water a year by 2028, up from about 17 billion gallons in 2023. Each 100-word AI prompt uses up roughly one 500ml bottle of water due to the cooling needs of datacenters, researchers have estimated. "The AI industry is sprinting as fast as it can to gain market dominance, and the rest of us have to deal with a great increase in water demand in places already in drought," said Christopher Dalbom, an expert in water resources law at Tulane University. "Even if there wasn't climate change, we'd be feeling the effects of droughts more acutely, because water demand is going up and up, to feed more people and water more lawns and crops. There isn't enough water to go around. Now with this explosion of datacenters, I think a crunch point is inevitable." Companies such as Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into new datacenters, with developers often drawn to dry, sparsely populated areas, due to the lower cost of land and generous tax breaks. Arid climates are also thought to cause the least amount of corrosion to equipment over time. One of the world's largest datacenters, a complex twice the size of Manhattan, was last month controversially approved in a Utah county that has been deep in drought since summer last year. Meanwhile, Walla Walla county in Washington, site of a planned Amazon datacenter, has also been overwhelmingly in drought since July last year. In Texas, two of the largest new datacenters are arriving in counties - Pecos county and Carson county - recently parched by drought. Datacenters could account for 9% of Texas's total water use by 2040, researchers recently calculated, with the state's water development board forecasting Texas will have to deal with rising overall demand and falling supply of water in the decades ahead. While an immediate water shortage is unlikely, hard choices will have to be made to avoid future clashes over water access, according to Dalbom. "When we get into a situation where there's a limited amount of water available, are we going to limit water to residents and businesses before datacenters?" he said. "In the eastern US, we have always assumed an abundance of water, so the legal systems aren't set up for shortages. We can't just assume that people aren't going to be asked to reduce their water use, while datacenters and energy won't be." Concerns over water use, as well as rising energy bills, have stirred local opposition to a rash of datacenter projects, causing some developments to be curtailed or canceled. These concerns have become a political headache for Republicans - Donald Trump has been a vocal supporter of the AI industry - with much of the opposition coming from rural, more conservative areas. "Ranchers are being told to be conservative with water, to not waste water, and now there's a new competing interest able to get near unlimited access to water," said Andrew Coppin, chief executive of Ranchbot, a company that helps ranchers track their water use. "The concerns from farmers are real and justified. Datacenters are flavor of the month now, but we wouldn't make the choice to only be able to have a shower on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. I mean, ChatGPT is a pretty nice tool, but most people would prefer to have a beef steak if they had to choose." Datacenter developers say the industry's current water use is still just a fraction of what much larger consumers, primarily agriculture, already take, causing growing strain on key sources such as the Colorado River. Even the irrigation of golf courses and lawns sucks up more water than datacenters. "Datacenter operators work closely with local authorities to ensure compliance with all applicable rules and regulations and to ensure operations do not stress local water supplies," said Dan Diorio, vice-president of state policy at the Data Center Coalition. "The industry is actively prioritizing responsible water use through operational best practices and innovative development strategies, often collaborating with local authorities and conservation organizations on water restoration and reclamation projects. Datacenter operators are among the few private sector industries actively investing in local water infrastructure." The sector claims it is making progress to replace standard evaporative cooling with more efficient technologies such as closed-loop cooling, whereby the same coolant, such as water or glycol, is continually piped among the servers to absorb their heat. However, while such cooling systems save water, they need more energy to run. This power typically comes from fossil fuels, which unlike cleaner forms of energy require copious amounts of water to generate electricity. Such a trade-off is evident at Meta's huge proposed datacenter, called Hyperion after the father of the sun in Greek mythology, in Louisiana. While the facility will use closed loop cooling, it will also need the energy input of 10 gas-fired power plants that will use large amounts of water as well as emit planet-heating emissions. "It will be an issue for farmers near the datacenter and if more datacenters are approved to draw down the same aquifer you get a death by a thousand cuts," said Dalbom. "You may see the water table going down so wells will have to be deeper to access the groundwater. There will still be water there but cost more to access." Meta said that it will prioritize on-site water efficiency to the extent that its water use will be less than if the land was used for agriculture purposes. "Meta estimates the datacenter will use as much as 1 billion gallons of water per year, drawing it from an aquifer currently used for agriculture, not from the community's drinking water," a company spokeswoman said. The overall water impact of AI is far larger than datacenters themselves, however. A January study found that datacenters will be responsible for just 4% of the 30 trillion gallons of extra water that will be needed, globally, for AI expansion by the mid-point of this century. Power generation and semiconductor fabrication for AI will suck up much more water than the datacenters themselves, the report states. "Datacenters are the most visible element to people but they are only part of the picture", said Albert Cho, chief strategy officer at Xylem, the company behind the study. Cho said that datacenters' water use will remain smaller than other large sectors, such as agriculture, and use of renewable energy and reduced water waste will help reduce demand. "Water tends not to be the top-line consideration," when datacenter sites are chosen, Cho said, but he added: "I think there is an emerging consensus among the major hyper-scalers about the importance of water stewardship." Yet the public backlash has been so strong - polling shows 70% of Americans don't want to live next to a datacenter - that some states are considering new restrictions. California, Michigan and Iowa, for example, are mulling bills to require operators to submit regular reports on water use while others, such as South Carolina and Kansas, may force developers to use closed loop cooling systems. Lawmakers in New York have gone further, with plans for an outright moratorium on datacenters. In Utah, the state's governor, who last year asked residents to pray for rain amid a deep drought, has attempted to reassure voters that the enormous new Stratos datacenter will not endanger the Great Salt Lake, which was already shrinking due to water overuse and rising global temperatures. A group opposing the county approval of Stratos is aiming to overturn this decision via a public referendum. The datacenter is backed by Kevin O'Leary, a Canadian businessman who has featured on TV shows such as Shark Tank and is a keen supporter of Trump. O'Leary has, without evidence, accused opponents of Stratos of being paid protesters or in league with the Chinese Communist party. "There could not be a worse advocate for this project than Kevin O'Leary, who has been absolutely dismissive of people in Utah again and again," said Ben Abbott, an ecologist at Brigham Young University and the executive director of Grow the Flow, a Utah environmental group. "I haven't found a single person in favor of this," he added. "It has brought together urban and rural communities, farmers and environmentalists, linking arms against this. I think this project is mortally wounded as a result." The Great Salt Lake is "headed for an all-time low" and the massive 9GW of power needed for Stratos, as well as its cooling systems, will likely push the ecosystem into further water deficit, Abbott said. "There couldn't be a worse time to do this," Abbott said of the Stratos project. "Climate change is causing important hydrological shifts and here in the west we have a less stable water supply due to the mega-drought. But, more importantly, we are also harvesting the fruits of a century of water overuse." O'Leary's case for the project is that it would be a big economic win, bringing jobs and tax revenue to rural parts of the state while helping the US win on AI in its rivalry with China. Last week he agreed to make cuts to the scale of the project after pressure from state lawmakers and said in a post on X that he was "working around the clock to address every issue raised, from water usage and environmental impact to power generation and community benefits". A lawsuit has also been filed against the project brought by five local residents and a progressive group. Worldwide, three-quarters of people could face drought impacts by 2050 all while datacenters use 9.3 trillion liters of water in the coming decade, enough to meet the drinking water needs of the planet's human population for over a year, the United Nations has estimated. Even when some withdrawn water is recycled by datacenters, "large-scale withdrawals can strain aquifers and river systems, particularly in arid or groundwater-depleted regions", a recent UN report warned. "We need to rethink our relationship with water because at the moment there is just this unrestricted demand everywhere," said Abbott. "We are in systemic water deficit almost everywhere on the planet."

Google pushes water standards amid data center backlash

Why it matters: Communities across the U.S. are increasingly pushing back against new data centers, often citing concerns about water use alongside rising power prices, local air pollution and noise. * Google argues that better practices -- and more transparency -- can help ease those fears. Driving the news: Google's framework calls for: * Returning more water to local watersheds than its data centers consume by 2030. * Avoiding water-intensive cooling in more water-stressed regions. * Helping fund local water infrastructure upgrades. * Pursuing alternatives such as reclaimed wastewater. * Disclosing water use annually. Reality check: None of these commitments are new on their own. * The announcement largely packages together practices Google says it increasingly follows already -- while turning them into a formal framework the company hopes others also adopt. By the numbers: In 2024, Google consumed 7.2 billion gallons of freshwater and replenished approximately 4.5 billion gallons of water, which is roughly 64%. What they're saying: "There's so many data center developers, and many of them are not doing it the right way, so people's concerns are legitimate," said Bikash Koley, vice president of global infrastructure at Google. * "But there is also a lack of information, and water is one of those where lack of information always breeds distrust." Zoom out: Google joins other tech giants including Microsoft, Amazon and Meta, which have over the past several years announced goals to better manage their water consumption at their data center operations. * While those efforts have largely focused on company-specific targets, Google is positioning its guidelines as a framework it hopes the broader industry will adopt. How it works: Data centers need cooling because the chips running AI generate enormous heat. * That cooling happens in two main places: first, close to the chips themselves; and second, across the broader building. * For the hottest AI chips, companies are increasingly using liquid cooling, which moves heat away from the chips through sealed pipes. Google says its closed-loop systems use very little water because it's continuously recirculated. Yes, but: That heat still has to leave the building. The main tradeoff is between water and power. * Evaporative cooling uses water to carry heat away and can require less electricity, while air cooling uses little or no water onsite but can require more electricity. * Air cooling consumes on average 10% more energy than evaporative cooling, and roughly twice that on a hot day, said Koley. * "It becomes a tradeoff between reducing stress on the grid versus reducing stress on the watershed," Koley said. State of play: Roughly two-thirds of Google's data centers use evaporative cooling, while the remaining third is a combination of air-cooled or using recycled, non-conventional water resources, said Ben Townsend, head of infrastructure and sustainability at Google. Between the lines: Google is making a more nuanced argument than many data center critics. * The company argues evaporative cooling can be the better environmental choice in places where water supplies aren't under stress because it reduces electricity demand. Case in point: Google officials pointed to a new data center in India using air-cooling technologies, and the American Southwest generally as examples of where their due diligence into the local water supplies compelled them to use less-water intensive cooling methods. What we're watching: Google executives declined to predict the company's future water use, saying local conditions heavily influence what cooling methods are deployed. Its 2025 numbers are coming out in a few weeks. The bottom line: Google says that the share of its data centers using air cooling is rising, a sign that water concerns are increasingly shaping how companies design the infrastructure behind the AI boom.