U.S. Data Centers Face Water Scarcity Challenges Amidst Rising Consumption
U.S. data centers consumed an estimated 17.4 billion gallons of water directly for cooling in 2023, a significant increase from 5.6 billion gallons in 2014. This growing demand for water by data centers, particularly those supporting artificial intelligence (AI), is raising concerns as a substantial portion of these facilities are located in areas experiencing high or extremely high water scarcity. According to Business Insider's analysis, approximately 30% of planned and existing U.S. data centers are in water-stressed regions, a figure that rises to 43% for facilities exceeding 40 megawatts. Furthermore, two-thirds of data centers built or developed since 2022 are situated in such stressed areas. Around 75% of the water supplied to U.S. data centers originates from municipal systems, indicating a direct competition for water resources with local communities. While AI's global water usage is currently a small fraction of overall freshwater withdrawals (estimated at 0.07% to 0.1% for withdrawal and 0.01% f...