AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report
wsj.com
wsj.com
…
Google consumes around three times as much water indirectly as directly, according to a paper published earlier this year by Alex de Vries-Gao, a researcher at the Netherlands-based university VU Amsterdam.
—
My take: they should report this in acre-feet instead of gallons, and then compare it to a crop, alfalfa for example.
My back of the envelope says even at the larger number Google is using the enough water to grow about 23,000 acres of alfalfa. That would produce about 138,000 tons which would sell for about $34 million.
Water use policy is about agriculture, agriculture, and also agricultural. Everything else is a distraction.
This article could have been about shipping alfalfa to the Middle East and Asia, but instead it was about this.
Say rain water is leaking into your house from two holes in the roof: one is 1 meter in diameter, the other is 1cm. Any effort you spend plugging the 1cm hole is a distraction from the 1m hole you really need to focus on.
You could make an argument that agriculture is different because we need agricultural products to live. But we don't need those specific products to live (alfalfa, almonds, etc), and they could be grown far more efficiently if water were priced by market rates.
You can't eat data.
To ask "What point?" Is disingenuous, since the point was laid out pretty clearly in the lineage of comments you were responding to.
I don't/can't know why you are struggling to grasp the point. It may be because you don't want to, or it may be because you are missing some other knowledge or perspective - the only way to sus that out is for you to engage with genuine curiosity. That's outside my control. I can confirm as an external party that you are missing the point of the GP, but I can't force you to want to understand it.
Here is the point from the comment you responded to, copy and pasted for your convenience. Please prove to me that spoon feeding you makes a difference:
> You could make an argument that agriculture is different because we need agricultural products to live. But we don't need those specific products to live (alfalfa, almonds, etc), and they could be grown far more efficiently if water were priced by market rates.
Thinking back I believe the logic was that the quote essentially says market will fix the issue, but that explanation is questionable. We know it is questionable precisely because the "fix" for the market not to starve people is more regulation. And the discussion is precisely about regulation of that kind, so the argument is circular.
Food is more important than whatever google does. :/
I would love to hear why you think food is not actually more important than data centers.
There is a term for your argument, it's called a "suckers choice".
Google's 10.9B gallons in 2025 is equivalent to ~55 18-hole golf courses (200M gallons/year average in the US). Which provided more value to the economy and to you as an individual last year? Google or 55 out of ~15k total golf courses in the US?
And I don't even golf.
Desalination, turning unlimited sea water into fresh water which is one of the most expensive sources of fresh water, is ~0.50 $/m^3. They can literally manufacture the water they use with zero impact on the water table for ~20 million dollars.
Of course location matters a ton in the water usage argument but I'm not sure how relevant this actually is when it comes to winning over hearts and minds.
Not sure how legit it is, but there is certainly more nuance to water usage.
I prefer the golf course analogy, which uses 2-3x the water of data centers and has dubious benefit to society beyond the entertainment for those who can afford the "green" fees
Alfalfa is the cleanest case of a crop that would not be planted nearly as much if western water law (prior appropriation) wasn’t so colossally stupid.
If I wanted to dislike them for environmental reasons, then I’d focus entirely on the energy consumption and CO2 emission from the generators directly hooked up to the data centers since the grid can’t provide them with enough juice.
If I wanted to dislike them for economic reasons, I’d focus entirely on the weird circular deals and mountain of debt.
If I wanted to dislike them for social reasons, I’d focus on how AI proponents themselves admit that the whole point is to take all of our jobs.
The water thing feels like a weird hill to die on. It doesn’t feel serious. It’s by far not the biggest problem!
Yeah, you're right. Some parts of the world is running out of fresh/clean water. We can drink coke instead.
It becomes unusable for consumption and farming. It becomes waste.
Closed loop systems and ordinary humidifying doesn’t and can’t “use” that amount of water.
Biocides in terms of datacenter cooling is used to prevent moss and algae to take over your pipe systems and clog them. In inner loops, even though isolated, any small contamination creates serious clogging and flow issues (the pipes are pretty narrow to begin with).
Inside a typical DLC server: https://lenovopress.lenovo.com/assets/images/LP1602/SD650-I%...
In outer loops, coolant hygiene is equally important since any layers of algae or moss creates clogs and reduces thermal conductivity in heat exchangers.
> It sounds pretty scary (“life kill! Yikes!”)
Since biocides prevent "living organisms" being present in water, it basically sterilizes it. You can't use biocide contaminated water to grow anything or to feed anything and anyone. I mean, we use similar materials to kill weeds. If you're exposed to them, after a certain dosage you'll experience nasty illnesses.
> Add to that the fact that I’ve never heard it used in the context of pollution, let alone datacenter-based pollution
See: https://h2ocooling.com/closed-loop-vs-open-loop/#How_Open-Lo...
Excerpt: Maintaining water quality demands robust chemical treatment programs. Scale inhibitors, biocides, corrosion inhibitors, and pH adjusters require careful monitoring and frequent adjustment to prevent system damage.
Biocides specialized for open-loop cooling systems: https://www.dober.com/water-treatment/cooling-tower-biocides
> I’m inclined to believe you’re not being serious.
It's your call. I work at a team for two decades which maintains a couple of Top500 systems. We still handle everything from unpacking to cabling to installation and software side (i.e. Full Stack) for most of our servers. DLC systems need their specialized installation teams on the ground, so we let them do their work, but for conventional systems we still do everything.
> Also, what processing plants are supposed to be separating water from “biocides and other chemicals”?
Your water treatment plant removes many harmful things to create potable water, but not all chemicals can be removed by them. US tap water frequently tests positive for antidepressant and other drugs' traces. Also treatment plants generally use bacteria (i.e. bugs) to remove harmful stuff, not chemicals (except gases like ozone) to treat water IIRC.
> Are you saying that in an open loop system, none of the water makes it back into the water cycle?
What I say is, in an open loop system, you use much more water and poison your environment during the process. Closed loop systems doesn't waste much water and certainly doesn't leak nasty chemicals around. You forcefully remove heat from the water with drycoolers and/or chillers and you can use the heat for secondary purposes if you want/can, too.
I mean, who has ever seen a cloud move?
Oil is mainly carbon, the carbon isn't destroyed by burning it. It just changes form. But now it's in the atmosphere instead of inside the earth. That's still a problem.
It’s not like it’s consumed like fuel. And it is not absorbed like in agriculture. But I understand it is not trivially recyclable either, the heat of the water alone can be harmful if released as-is. Does cooling happen via evaporation and is that how the water is “lost”? And I am not sure if it is contaminated in other ways.
What is the actual impact or opportunity cost of using the water in datacenter (or energy plant) cooling versus other uses?
The result is unusable, somewhat toxic (since you can't remove the chemicals), deoxygenated (hot water can dissolve less oxygen) liquid which can't be used for anything, incl. farming or support any kind of life.
It's water, but it's not. It's not suitable for anything. Practically, waste.
If you use heat exchangers and closed circuits in outer loops, you don't waste the water and pump the heat elsewhere, and make that useful. Heat something in the winter, support greenhouses, provide hot water in the building, etc. etc. When you discard the hot water instead of recycling it in closed loop, you make it unusable for anything. From potting it to flushing your toilet. Every possible use case is gone.
If you need a toxic ballast material, maybe you can use it.
These are not power plants, there are zero data centers using open loop cooling that discharge loop water back into a waterway. It’s unnecessary when you’re cooling a data center.
The system is filled with water and begins operating. As water is lost to evaporation in the cooling towers, more water is added to the cooling loop.
At no point is any of the cooling loop water discharged back into a waterway, it gets recirculated through the system.
All that being said, closed loop cooling is much better in areas with a lack of water.
First, I don't see the banks of dry coolers or chillers required to cool that amount of water in many of the data center photos.
Second, our closed loop data center is not losing that amount of water, so losing 10 billion gallons of water to evaporation across that many data centers seems unrealistic, even with evaporation for humidity balancing and dry-cooler boosting reasons.
Sitting on top of a data center and directly working on it has its perks, apparently.
Adding evaporative cooling towers to a chilled water loop that uses chillers can double the efficiency.
A power plant that draws water from an intake, uses it to reject heat, cools it down, and then discharges it back to the stream/lake/ocean is once-thru cooling.
Just because the U.S. uses it doesn’t mean the rest the world does in every build.
Buildings are built for the climate of where they exist.
If a building can’t cool itself above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, that sounds like it could be common in the U.S. there are other ways to cool the building other water.
It would not be the same in a country like Canada, or other northern climates.
This water narrative is being used to undermine new datacenters in other countries, and it’s kind of strange a publication would so willingly not learn a and clarify the difference about buildings being built differently in different countries with different climates.
With drycoolers or chillers, you can pump out enormous amount of heat energy out of water, even in hot climates.
Datacenters will always be efficiency driven, and that includes putting them in places that need less heating, less energy/power, etc.
There's probably interests in datacenters that might not want attention going to other locations that might be more viable than the ones they have.
Wake up, people! Stop the evil producers of almonds!
- I don't like crypto, so it's bad,
- I like AI, so it's good, even if it's destroying our world.
BTW, I believe that AI is a good thing in its ideal case, but we need to sort its energy use and data ethics issues.
The true accusation was that crypto used more energy than banks per transaction. Your framing is very dishonest.
Is that water cleaned and put back in the environment?
Can the municipalities use the tax cash influx to clean up their power sources?
Not answered or considered which is weird for an org as storied as WSJ.
The bottom line is Heartland re-industrialization will use resources and look different from previous industries.
Can we keep the political focus on the oligcharcal control over our government instead of making something as dry as data centers some kind of new frontline on the Omni-cause
I imagine every side jumping on the water issue is exactly trying to distract from this. You'll notice you hear about water consumption issues much more than oligarchy and wealth inequality on "progressive media".
We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can call out wealth inequality and oligarchy, and also talk about the very real water issue with regard to data centers (and electricity, and loss of rural land, and other many other aspects).
I'm all for responsible water use in data centers and I don't doubt that the cheapest, most environmentally destructive option is the one being used. That should be talked about, pushed back against, etc.
However, let's not argue in bad faith and say that we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and then quietly forget about the walking (oligarchy/wealth inequality/decreasing quality of life/increasing cost of life, etc) while everyone yells and throws water stats around.
With the planet heating up at an enormous pace and we have a new hip word called "Water Scarcity" with a cool map (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity#/media/File:Wat...),
I don't think this is a distraction.