Water Behind the Watts: The Hidden Risk of Powering Data Centers

This report spotlights data centers’ biggest and least visible water use: the power that runs them  

While data center companies typically focus on the amount of water they use to cool the technology running within their facilities, the water used for power generation to meet their massive energy needs has an even greater impact. 

Our report examines this largely overlooked water demand across seven states that together host about half of all U.S. data centers—Virginia, Texas, California, Illinois, Georgia, Ohio, and Arizona. In these states, water-intensive generation supplies much of the grid—and many of the plants supplying that power are in regions facing water stress or drought.  

As the buildout of data centers for AI accelerates across the U.S., the stakes for water, energy, and land are rising just as quickly. The growing pushback from communities nationwide crystallizes the task at hand: ensuring that new data centers are powered by clean energy, use water more efficiently, and are developed in ways that are fair, affordable, and protective of local communities and natural resources. It highlights steps that power producers, data center operators, policymakers, and investors can take to assess and address these risks.  

Among the report’s key findings on water:  

• Power generation makes up the bulk of the data center water use. Data centers in the states analyzed depend on about 3.4 trillion gallons of freshwater annually for electricity, around 12 times the annual water use of Los Angeles, Phoenix, and Washington D.C., combined. 

• The amount of water needed to produce electricity varies widely by state, depending on the type of electricity generation used. 78% of the electricity in the states analyzed came from power plants that use water to operate. 

• Most electricity is generated by power plants located in areas facing water stress or drought (or both). In these states, 66% of power plants that use water were exposed to medium-high to extremely high water stress. 

• Most power producers identify data centers as a primary driver of rising electricity demand, but few have considered the potential water risks tied to this growth.  

• Most companies operating data centers do not take into account the water risks linked to the electricity they purchase.