AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

Google’s just-released 2025 sustainability report is an instructive example. The company said it consumed 10.9 billion gallons of water—a 34% increase from 2024—almost all for data-center cooling.

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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.

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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.

How much water AI data centers use feels like the least interesting reason to dislike them.

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!

I feel like it’s never made clear in what way the water is used up in these cases.

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?

I feel like we've already had this discussion with respect to Crypto; crypto used more energy than banks (which proved to be false, but whatever); and water. Now AI uses magnitude more energy than crypto (or humans) and somehow they're now saying it's okay?

Almonds producers in California use roughly 60-85 times more water annually than all US data centers combined, depending on the exact figures and whether indirect power-plant water is included.

Wake up, people! Stop the evil producers of almonds!

I wish these articles would clarify that there are climates where datacenters exist where water is not used food for cooling including evaporative 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.

tl;dr: Because the power plants they rent power from, and have very little control over, use water too

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