AI data centers
Do AI data centers use water?
Yes. Most use water to stay cool. But how much they use, and where it comes from, is different at almost every site. A data center is a building full of computers, and computers make heat. Water is a cheap way to carry that heat away, so most data centers use some. A growing number, though, are built to use almost none. The numbers about how much get used come from outside research, and we point to it. What we add is the part almost no one tracks: how each data center we follow gets its cooling water. Most of the ones that say how they cool are built to use very little.
Find out instantly when it changes.
Yes. A data center is packed with computers, and computers give off heat. Water is a cheap way to carry that heat away, so most data centers use some.
But many new ones are built to use almost none. So the real answer is not the same for every site.
There are two kinds of water use here, and people mix them up all the time.
The first is the water the building itself uses to cool down. Often it lets the water evaporate, a little like sweat.
The second is the water used far away, at the power plants that make the building's electricity. For a data center on the regular power grid, this hidden amount is usually the bigger one.
We did not measure these amounts ourselves. The numbers on this page come from outside research, and we say who did each study.
Here is the part we track that almost no one else does: how each data center we follow gets its cooling water.
Some are cooled by air, or by dry systems, and use little or no water.
Some use a closed loop. The water goes around and around in a sealed system, so it only gets topped off now and then instead of being pulled in all the time.
Some use recycled water, or even seawater, so they stay off the drinking water supply.
The table below shows each one, with a link to where the fact came from.
One thing we do not have is an exact gallons-per-year number for a single site. Companies rarely share that. So we show how each site gets its water, and we point to the research for the big numbers, instead of making one up.
How the sites we track stay cool
We track 103 AI data centers, and 43 of them say how they handle cooling water. Almost no one else keeps this. It is not a gallons number. It is the cooling method, site by site, with a source for each.
- Disclose their approach
- 43
- Air / dry, little or no water
- 9
- Reclaimed or seawater
- 5
- Water-minimizing in total
- 14
What is claimed, and who says it
Each box below says who the fact comes from. The last box is the honest limit of what we can answer.
Two kinds of water use
A data center makes heat, and water helps carry it off. Some of that water is used right at the building. More of it is used far away, at the power plants that make the building's electricity. This federal report explains both. For a site on the regular grid, the far-away amount is often the bigger one.
A lot in total, and hard to pin down per use
US data centers used about 4.4 percent of the country's electricity in 2023, and that could reach 6.7 to 12 percent by 2028 (LBNL). One study found that about half a liter of water is used for every 20 to 50 ChatGPT-style questions, though the exact number depends on what you count (UC Riverside). About 80 percent of the water used in evaporative cooling evaporates and does not come back (EESI). These are outside estimates, not our own measurements.
The Dalles, Oregon: 355 million gallons
The town of The Dalles sued to keep Google's water use secret. After it lost, the records showed Google's data centers there used about 355 million gallons in 2021, about 29 percent of the whole town's water. It stands out because most sites never share a number like this.
Where the water comes from, not how much
We track how each site we follow gets its cooling water, shown below. We do not have an exact gallons number for a single site. Companies rarely share that. So we show where the water comes from, and we point to the research for the big totals.
Air or dry cooling, little or no water
Cooled mostly by air, so it uses little or no water.
9 tracked campuses
| Alterra Marshall Technology & Energy Center | Marshall | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Closed-loop liquid cooling proposed to minimize water use; developer said it would not draw from Stuart Lake (reported, Dec 2025). No gpd figure sourced. |
| Amazon Project Rainier Data Center (New Carlisle) | New Carlisle | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Uses free-air cooling about 90% of the year, switching to evaporative (water) cooling only when ambient temperature exceeds ~85F; cooling water is drawn from the New Carlisle aquifer, with Phase 1 permitted at ~1.6M gal/day and Amazon stating water is used in under 2% of hours annually. |
| Google Mesa Data Center (Redhawk) | Mesa | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Air-cooled to minimize water consumption given regional water scarcity (Google) |
| Meta Beaver Dam Data Center | Beaver Dam | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Dry cooling; Meta states no water demand for cooling once operational, with water restoration returning 100% of consumed water to local watersheds. |
| Meta Hyperion Data Center (Richland Parish) | Delhi | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Operator describes a closed-loop system circulating a glycol mixture through the data halls, with heat rejected via dry cooling for the majority of the year; a water permit is reported at roughly 23 MGD across six wells sized to peak-summer demand. |
| Microsoft Fairwater Data Center (Mount Pleasant) | Mount Pleasant | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Closed-loop liquid cooling filled once at construction with no ongoing water draw and no evaporation across about 90% of capacity; the remaining ~10% uses outdoor-air cooling and taps water only during peak summer heat. Microsoft compares annual water use to a single restaurant. |
| Polaris Forge 1 (Ellendale) | Ellendale | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Applied Digital proprietary closed-loop / waterless cooling design. |
| Polaris Forge 2 (Harwood) | Harwood | Air or dry cooling, little or no water | Applied Digital proprietary closed-loop / waterless cooling design. |
Closed loop, sealed and reused
The water goes around in a sealed loop and only gets topped off now and then.
12 tracked campuses
| Compass Datacenters Red Oak Campus (DFW III) | Red Oak | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Closed-loop water-cooling system that is not connected to the city utility line and, per city staff, uses less water annually than a Walmart Supercenter. |
| Crusoe Childress Campus | Childress | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling to reduce water use. |
| Lake Mariner Data Campus | Barker | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Closed-loop cooling that does not draw from Lake Ontario despite the lakeside location and legacy coal-plant intake; the campus uses only a few gallons of utility water daily. |
| Lancium Fort Stockton Clean Campus | Fort Stockton | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Closed-loop, non-evaporative liquid cooling that recirculates a sealed water volume; once filled it requires no additional water for the life of the project. |
| Microsoft Fairwater Atlanta / QTS Fayetteville Campus | Fayetteville | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Closed-loop liquid cooling consuming almost zero water; initial fill equivalent to what 20 homes use in a year, no evaporation, ~6-year loop life (Microsoft). Grid-only, no on-site generation and no UPS/gen-sets. |
| Nebius Independence AI Factory Campus | Independence | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Municipal water via city Courtney Bend Water Treatment plant; closed-loop cooling; one-time fill ~1M gal per 200MW building; recurring ~400,000-640,000 gal/year (city FAQ). |
| Project Jade (Crusoe / Tallgrass) AI Data Center Campus | Cheyenne | Closed loop, sealed and reused | On-site deep groundwater wells drilled below the aquifers that supply Laramie County; closed-loop cooling to minimize consumption. Reported initial fill roughly equivalent to 20 households and ongoing annual use less than three households (Cowboy State Daily). |
| Stargate Abilene | Abilene | Closed loop, sealed and reused | Closed-loop, direct-to-chip water cooling with near-zero evaporation; Abilene's mayor stated the site uses roughly 10 million gallons/year, against the city's 21 to 24 million gallons/day. |
Recycled water
Cooled with recycled water instead of drinking water.
4 tracked campuses
| AWS Madison County Data Center Campuses | Canton | Recycled water | Transitioning to recycled/treated wastewater cooling by 2027; $215M state loan funded wastewater treatment upgrades |
| STACK Stafford Technology Campus | Stafford | Recycled water | Reclaimed water system for industrial cooling; project funds water/sewer upgrades eliminating $58M from Stafford County's Capital Improvement Program |
| Switch Citadel Campus (Tahoe Reno) | McCarran (Tahoe Reno Industrial Center) | Recycled water | Supplied with reclaimed (treated effluent) water via a 16-mile pipeline from the Truckee Meadows Water Reclamation Facility; Switch states its cooling approach minimizes water dependence. |
| xAI Colossus (Memphis) | Memphis | Recycled water | Cooled with treated wastewater (about 3 million gallons/day) piped from the purpose-built Colossus Water Recycling Plant, avoiding an equivalent draw on Memphis drinking water; on-site power is from methane gas turbines. |
Seawater
Cooled with seawater, so it stays off the fresh water supply.
1 tracked campus
| Reliance Jamnagar AI-Enabled Data Centre | Jamnagar | Seawater | Cooled with desalinated seawater from the Gulf of Kutch; Meta covers full cost of energy and water for the leased block. |
City drinking water
Uses regular city drinking water to cool, the kind that gets the most attention.
1 tracked campus
| xAI Colossus 2 Data Center | Southaven | City drinking water | Sits too far from the wastewater plant and draws millions of gallons/day of drinking water (about 1.3M gal/day as of early 2026); xAI has announced an ~$80M treatment plant to reuse ~13M gal/day of wastewater. Powered by on-site natural gas turbines. |
Water noted, no single method
A sourced water note that does not fit one clean method above.
16 tracked campuses
| Amazon (AWS) Hermiston / Umatilla Data Center Campus | Hermiston | Water noted, no single method | Hermiston annexed 810 acres into its Urban Growth Boundary (South Hermiston Industrial Park) in Sept 2025 for future data centers. Region attractive for proximity to Columbia River water supply. Existing AWS load served via PacifiCorp. |
| Cayuga Data Campus | Lansing | Water noted, no single method | Existing industrial-scale water intake system at former coal plant; TeraWulf states it will NOT rely on Cayuga Lake to cool the data center |
| Dove Creek Data Center (Beacon) | San Angelo | Water noted, no single method | Off-grid; powered by on-site natural-gas reciprocating engines (RICE). ~1,240 acres of buildable land (est. 70% of total site). Facility sited 0.25 mi south of US 67 on FM 2335, west Tom Green County. Community concerns raised over water and power; water source not specified in permit reporting. |
| Google Pryor (MidAmerica) Data Center Campus | Pryor | Water noted, no single method | Evaporative cooling; the facility drew about 1.1 billion gallons of water in one year from the Neosho River via the MidAmerica Industrial Park, discharging ~253 million gallons back to the river with the remainder lost to evaporation (July 2024 to June 2025, via open-records request). |
| Google The Dalles Data Center Campus | The Dalles | Water noted, no single method | 2024 use ~434.4M gal/yr (~1.19M gpd), up from 104M gal/yr in 2012; underground water right up to 3.88M gpd acquired with smelter; city commitment up to 2M gpd by Jan 2028, potential 8M gpd with expansion. Retail water via City of The Dalles; subject of a 2022-2023 public-records dispute (The Oregonian). |
| Meta Eagle Mountain Data Center Campus | Eagle Mountain | Water noted, no single method | Meta funds water restoration equal to 200% of the facility's consumption; in-house designs stated ~80% more water-efficient than industry average. |
| Meta Los Lunas Data Center Campus | Los Lunas | Water noted, no single method | New AI-dedicated buildings designed to use substantially less water than earlier buildings |
| Meta Social Circle / Stanton Springs Data Center | Social Circle | Water noted, no single method | Served within Southern Company / Walton EMC territory (Southern Company is the balancing authority; not an RTO/ISO). |
How we know this
The big-picture numbers here come from outside research, and we name each one: a federal report for how the water use works, a US national lab for the electricity figures, a UC Riverside study for the per-question estimate, and public records for the one clear per-site number. The notes on how each site gets its cooling water come straight from that site's record on DEPLOY.
We track where each site gets its cooling water, which we can check, and we point to the research for the totals, which we cannot measure ourselves. We do not have an exact gallons number for a single site, and we do not claim one anywhere on this page.
Common questions
How much water does an AI data center use?
Why do data centers need water at all?
Where does the water come from?
Do data centers pollute the water they use?
Which data centers use the least water?
Does AI use more water than regular data centers?
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