Data Centers

Key Facts

• U.S. data centers directly consumed about 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023 — roughly 48 million gallons per day. Operating data centers produces enormous amounts of heat, requiring large volumes of water for cooling, equipment protection, and fire suppression. Many facilities also use potable drinking water for cooling instead of treated wastewater or other lower-impact sources, which are often more costly to implement. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratorynpj Clean Water
• Much of the water used for data center cooling is lost through evaporation instead of returning to the local water system. Evaporative cooling, one of the most common cooling methods used by large modern data centers, is energy-efficient but directly consumes water, often from municipal supplies. A 2026 study on data center impacts to public water systems found that data centers can evaporate roughly 70–90% of withdrawn water, compared with about 5–15% for residential users. As AI data centers expand, evaporation-based cooling is expected to remain a major concern, especially during periods of extreme heat. 2026 study
• Most data center water use may happen beyond the facility itself. According to the International Energy Agency, an average 100 MW hyperscale data center in the United States consumes about 2 million liters of water per day in total, with more than 60% coming from indirect water use. This includes water tied to the energy supply and semiconductor manufacturing needed to keep data centers operating. International Energy Agency
• Water use reporting remains deeply inconsistent across the data center industry. Uptime Institute's 2021 Global Data Center Survey found that only 51% of respondents measured water use in some way, and that this was done mainly at the individual site level instead of across an entire portfolio of facilities. Uptime Institute
• The water burden is local, even when the technology is used globally. People around the world may rely on the services powered by a data center, but the water withdrawals, evaporation, and watershed impacts are concentrated in the community where the facility is built. The Lincoln Institute of Land Policy explains that even when data centers use reclaimed or recycled water, that water may no longer return to the rivers and streams local communities depend on. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy
• Data center siting often forces a trade-off between water use and electricity use. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory explains that water-cooled and evaporation-based cooling systems are generally more energy-efficient, while air-cooled or waterless systems use little to no onsite water but require more electricity. In other words, a data center can often reduce water use by using more power, or reduce power use by consuming more water. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory