You ask your phone a simple question based on artificial intelligence (AI): “What’s the weather like today?” The answer is available immediately. But, that one question uses as much water as an entire bottle of water. Yes, whenever you use AI, water is evaporating from a data center cooling tower somewhere. This water could be used for drinking, crop irrigation or municipal supply. How much water do data centers use?
Why do data centers need so much water?
Data centers are not typical offices; These are huge halls filled with thousands of servers. These servers generate a lot of heat around the clock. If they are not cooled, they will melt. A lot of water is used to keep them cool – either by generating steam in cooling towers or indirectly through thermal power plants, since data centers cannot operate without electricity.
How much water does a data center use daily?
According to a report by the Environmental and Energy Studies Institute (EESI), an average hyperscale data center with a capacity of 100 MW uses 3 million to 5 million gallons of water daily. In liters this means 11.1 lakh to 1.9 crore liters of water daily. To understand this:
A person needs 3-4 liters of drinking water daily.
A 100 MW data center uses enough water to meet the daily drinking water needs of 30 million to 50 million people.
A data center’s daily water use is a large portion of the drinking water required in a day for a city like Mumbai (which has a population of 20 million).
How did Google and Microsoft use the city’s water supply? When we look at America’s big tech companies, the statistics are even more shocking:
In its 2023 environmental report, Google reported that its data centers and offices used 5.6 billion gallons – about 21.2 billion liters – of water that year. Of this, a Google data center located in the Dells, America, used 1.5 million gallons (about 5.7 million liters) of water daily. This was 29% of the total water supply of that entire area. Microsoft’s data center in Goodyear, Arizona, used more than 56 million liters of water in 2022, while the area was in drought.
The amount of water used daily in a data center is equivalent to the amount of water used in an entire growing season.
In the context of Indian farming, one acre of wheat crop requires about 2 to 2.5 million liters of water throughout the growing season (from sowing to harvesting). Consider Google’s data center in Dallas, which uses 5.7 million liters of water daily; The facility uses enough water to grow an entire crop of wheat on approximately two and a half acres of land each day. On an annual basis, the data center uses more than 2 billion liters of water – the equivalent of irrigating 800 to 1,000 acres of wheat over an entire growing season. This reveals the water needs of not only small farmers but also large agricultural farms.
AI Thirst: How much water does a chatbot use during a conversation?
According to a research study published in the journal *Nature*, training a large language model like GPT-4 consumes an estimated 7 million liters of fresh water. Asking 10 to 50 questions to a chatbot can result in the equivalent of a half-litre water bottle evaporating – causing permanent damage. To put this into perspective, an Olympic-sized swimming pool holds approximately 2.5 million liters of water. Training GPT-4 consumes about the same amount of water as three Olympic-sized swimming pools. The daily use of AI chatbots by people around the world causes the equivalent of dozens of swimming pools of water to evaporate every day.
Are we ready for the data center boom in India?
The data center industry in India is growing very rapidly. According to a NASSCOM report, India’s total data center capacity was 950 MW in 2024 and is expected to increase to 1,700 MW by 2026. A common estimate is that a 100 MW data center uses an average of 15 million liters of water per day:
In 2024, all data centers in India will use about 140 million liters of water daily. By 2026, this figure could increase to more than 250 million liters per day.
Now, compare this to human needs. 250 million liters of water, equivalent to the daily drinking water needs of more than 80 million people. In other words, in just two years, India’s data centers have used enough water to quench the thirst of one-third of the population of Uttar Pradesh (which has a total population of 240 million). Interestingly, these data centers are being built in cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, where there is already water shortage.
Is there any solution to this wastage of water?
According to experts, pressure on tech companies is increasing. Google and Microsoft have pledged to become ‘water positive’ by 2030 – meaning they will harvest more water than they use. New data centers are adopting technologies like ‘air cooling’ and ‘liquid immersion cooling’, which reduce water usage to almost zero levels.
Plans are also underway to use recycled waste water and sea water for cooling. The reality is that our digital lives are filled with an unseen thirst. The next time you watch a video on your phone, scroll through social media, or ask an AI to create a funny image, stop for a moment. Behind the scenes, a data center cooling tower might be turning water from a farmer’s field into steam to fulfill your little wish. This debate is about technology versus technology. It’s not about making, it’s about our thinking.
