The Water Footprint of AI
doi.org
doi.org
This is about as much as the annual consumption of the California almond farms.
(An acre-foot is approximately 1200 cubic meters.)
https://www.c-win.org/cwin-water-blog/2022/7/11/california-a...
More directly, a global analysis does not mean the AI data centers are evenly distributed around the world. From the article:
"A Bloomberg analysis suggests about two-thirds of data centers built or planned since 2022 are water-stressed regions, concentrated in Australia, Chile, Mexico, Spain, Saudi-Arabia, and the US Southwest (Nicoletti et al., 2025). Within the United States, Texas hosts over 400 data centers projected to consume nearly 3% of statewide water supply by 2030 (Martinez, 2025), in a state grappling with recurring drought conditions and aquifer depletion."
"Corporate sustainability reports confirm this concentration: approximately 42% of Microsoft's water consumption occurs in water-stress regions, and 15% of Google's water use is concentrated in high water-scarcity areas (Barratt et al., 2025)."
Comparing water-stressed regions in California for almond production to water-stressed regions used for data centers does seem relevant.
> Almonds use roughly the same amount of water as total indoor water use in California. This is unsustainable.
> There are simply too many almonds being planted in areas with unsustainable water supplies (minimal to no groundwater, uncertain or no surface water). ...
> We’re not opposed to growing almonds; we’re opposed to growing them unsustainably and taking water away from the environment and our cities. Almonds are a luxury and export crop; approximately 70% of the state’s crop is shipped abroad for the express benefit of a handful of industrial-scale growers and hedge funds.
> Water is a public trust resource, and Californians must regain control of it as they face a future certain to be beleaguered by drought, low reservoirs and over-drafted aquifers. We can't continue to subsidize agribusiness plutocrats with the water ratepayers need for basic survival.
Water for AI also uses unsustainable water supplies, directs water away from the environment and our cities, and is subsidized for big tech plutocrats paid for by water ratepayers. It also sure seems to me that most AI use falls in the "luxury" category.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/business/energy-environme...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/oct/04/pfas-pol...
Even if the water evaporates, it will enter the ecosystem as such and eventually end up as liquid water again. Or am I totally mistaken?
Water use in electricity generation is significant. In the England we are in the middle of a drought and it is surprising to realise that electricity generation uses 2.5x more ('environmentally extracted') water than public supply and 10x more than agriculture.
The real issue with AI datacenters is the huge amounts of wasted energy, after decades of energy efficiency efforts.
[edit] This is an awfully pessimistic take. Even if these companies will largely do whatever they like, some of us can at least make choices to use alternatives. That is probably what you were getting at.
It's also "caught more press" because for some insane reason these clowns keep wanting to build them in deeply drought-stricken desert regions where many people are already under water restrictions due to the ongoing drought.
Yet we don't.
If people don't like AI, they should just say so, no need to skirt around.
I don't like the snake oil being sold as AI.
LLMs rely on many core AI concepts and techniques: neural networks, backpropagation, transformer inference, etc. An LLM is essentially an implementation of AI.
The term AI has been around since 1955, and has been used by the academics ever since then.
You might not like ChatGPT and co, but they're definitely AIs lol, at least in academic sense.
Try persuading people to share your values.
unreal fucking chutzpah. even here, where current thing activists do occasionally get challenged with indisputable evidence debunking their wild claims, they still stubbornly cling to the water narrative. on reddit and other spaces populated by the intellectual majority, it's gospel that every chatgpt query consumes a lake.
Best regards, European person where lakes dry out atm.
While man-made climate change is undoubtedly real, the yearly "our lakes dry up"-media cycle is not proof of it at all. Check if the return to normal in November will make the news.
I am aware and never claimed that. Though, the global push towards mega factories, data centers and whatnot does not help the situation. Lots of places here in Germany already struggle with having enough water, so the mindset to "lets just build a Tesla mega factory here" is something I never understood. Can't be that different for data centers. We should use our resources smartly, not for profit margins.
Your comment very much implies a strong link between the two however. That you then switch from data centres to factories is also a shift that is not related to the discussion at hand.
Personally, everything I've read on the issue indicates that the water usage, for a product that I hear mentioned daily by people in the street, is insignificant.
I have many qualms with AI, mainly about the politics of AI labs and its effects on inequality, and I am active in this field. But I see its environmental costs as a weak argument and don't use it, despite of how receptive people that I try to convince are to it: it uses much less energy, harms many fewer animals, and serves more of a purpose than animal agriculture, so I prefer to move my environmental actions towards that.
> Two-thirds of post-2022 data centers are located in water-stressed regions.
I don't think it's wrong to ask questions about that _IF_ you also ask questions about all the other usages of water, like the Californian almond stuff.
Just saying "You shouldn't use AI because it uses too much water" is kind of ridiculous.
You're using up all the water by gobbling macaroons and marzipan.
While the Earth is (mostly[1]) a closed system when it comes to water, any particular region on Earth is not a closed system with respect to clean drinking water.
Deplete groundwater reserves faster than they refill? No more water for you. Raise the ambient temperature far enough that the rainclouds go somewhere cooler? No more water for you. As long as your usage is below the replacement rate, all seems well. Imbalance the system, and you have indeed "consumed" your local water supply.
> Is the water contaminated with chemicals? Maybe heat?
Typically yes. Definitely yes.
> Can people or wildlife consume it?
With enough water purification infrastructure, sure. I'm not aware of very many datacenters installing such infrastructure.
> Can you use rainwater?
It's all rainwater, whether directly or indirectly. The question is what would have benefited from that rainwater had it not been redirected to a datacenter?
Right, but this is not what is reported by "water consumption". It would be much better to have some kind of index (probably multiple) that estimates how close a particular feature of the water system is to a problem. Is the temperature too high, is there too high a concentration of some contaminant, etc etc.
You are make a semantic distinction here, but "consumptive use" is a term of art in modelling water usage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumptive_water_use