The Data Center Water Secret Let's talk about the water not accounted for when it comes to AI data center water use, and why local media have ha...
Published by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network
The Data Center Water Secret
Let's talk about the water not accounted for when it comes to AI data center water use, and why local media have had to sue to find out real numbers.
Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby
Jul 29, 2026
They say it many different ways.
“We’re water-neutral.”
“We recycle.”
“We use closed-loop cooling.”
Here is what’s not said: Most of the water a data center actually consumes never touches the building at all.
When a tech company tells a county board that its new campus will use, say, 2 million gallons a year for cooling, that number is real. But it’s only the direct water. They are talking about the water that runs through the chillers on site.
What that number leaves out is the indirect water. You have to account for the water consumed upstream at the power plant that’s burning coal or gas or splitting atoms to generate the electricity that data center needs, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
That indirect water, or the water used to make the electricity, accounts for about 80 percent of a data center’s total water footprint, according to industry analysis from Apstech Advisors.
Other research put it differently but lands in the same place. Indirect consumption runs more than 10 times higher than what happens on-site, according to analysis from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Another study from International Energy Agency in 2025 estimated that about two-thirds of all water used by data centers is linked to electricity generation, while one-fourth is tied to cooling.
Either way you slice it, the number a company puts in its press release is the smallest slice of the real footprint, and it’s the only slice anyone’s required to disclose.
See it in the reports
I wanted to see this dynamic in action, not just in theory. So, I went and read Amazon’s own sustainability materials on data center water use, published earlier this summer.
Here’s what Amazon says about itself.
Its data centers used 0.12 liters of water for every kilowatt-hour of computing in 2025, a figure the company says is seven times+ more efficient than an industry average of 0.84 L/kWh.
Amazon says it’s three-quarters of the way to a 2030 goal of being “water positive,” returning more water to communities than it draws, and that in 2025 it returned three gallons for every four it used. It points to more than 50 water-replenishment projects and 26 facilities running on reclaimed wastewater instead of drinking water.
I didn’t read one sentence in Amazon’s public materials about the water consumed at the power plants generating the electricity behind those servers, or the 80 percent of the footprint that, by the industry’s own analysts’ estimates, actually matters more.
Amazon’s 2.5-billion-gallon global consumption figure, reported this year, is the company’s first-ever public disclosure of a total water number. It’s not a years-long track record, but rather a first draft.
You can access their full Sustainability Report here. https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/reports
I looked at Google’s environmental reports, which show water consumption climbing from roughly 6 billion gallons in 2023 to 8.1 billion gallons in 2024 to 10.9 billion gallons in 2025, nearly doubling in two years, even as the company touts efficiency gains.
None of these companies’ headline efficiency metrics, the liters-per-kilowatt-hour numbers that show up in press releases and county board presentations, account for water used to generate the electricity that keeps these buildings running.
That’s the shell game, and it’s not unique to any one company. It’s the industry’s shared blind spot, and it’s the one number nobody’s required to hand over.
It’s also worth noting that these numbers come from voluntary corporate reports not audited filings.
I believe California Governor Gavin Newsom was wrong to veto legislation that would have required data centers in the state to disclose water consumption levels, as independent audits can offer a better understanding of what’s going on.
Why does this matter if the total national impact is small?
Nationally, direct data center water use is a rounding error.
By some estimates it’s around 17 billion gallons a year, or about three-tenths of one percent of the public water supply in this country. If you only look at the national average, you could convince yourself this whole fight is overblown. Some people may take that side.
But averages hide a deeper truth. Water isn’t consumed nationally. It’s consumed locally. It comes from your aquifer, your river, or your municipal treatment plant. In the towns where these campuses actually get built, the local numbers look nothing like the national ones.
SOURCE: https://www.thebrockovichreport.com/p/the-data-center-water-secret?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=ErinBrockovich%2Fmagazine%2FThe%2BBrockovich%2BReport
Let's talk about the water not accounted for when it comes to AI data center water use, and why local media have had to sue to find out real numbers.
Erin Brockovich and Suzanne Boothby
Jul 29, 2026
They say it many different ways.
“We’re water-neutral.”
“We recycle.”
“We use closed-loop cooling.”
Here is what’s not said: Most of the water a data center actually consumes never touches the building at all.
When a tech company tells a county board that its new campus will use, say, 2 million gallons a year for cooling, that number is real. But it’s only the direct water. They are talking about the water that runs through the chillers on site.
What that number leaves out is the indirect water. You have to account for the water consumed upstream at the power plant that’s burning coal or gas or splitting atoms to generate the electricity that data center needs, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
That indirect water, or the water used to make the electricity, accounts for about 80 percent of a data center’s total water footprint, according to industry analysis from Apstech Advisors.
Other research put it differently but lands in the same place. Indirect consumption runs more than 10 times higher than what happens on-site, according to analysis from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Another study from International Energy Agency in 2025 estimated that about two-thirds of all water used by data centers is linked to electricity generation, while one-fourth is tied to cooling.
Either way you slice it, the number a company puts in its press release is the smallest slice of the real footprint, and it’s the only slice anyone’s required to disclose.
See it in the reports
I wanted to see this dynamic in action, not just in theory. So, I went and read Amazon’s own sustainability materials on data center water use, published earlier this summer.
Here’s what Amazon says about itself.
Its data centers used 0.12 liters of water for every kilowatt-hour of computing in 2025, a figure the company says is seven times+ more efficient than an industry average of 0.84 L/kWh.
Amazon says it’s three-quarters of the way to a 2030 goal of being “water positive,” returning more water to communities than it draws, and that in 2025 it returned three gallons for every four it used. It points to more than 50 water-replenishment projects and 26 facilities running on reclaimed wastewater instead of drinking water.
I didn’t read one sentence in Amazon’s public materials about the water consumed at the power plants generating the electricity behind those servers, or the 80 percent of the footprint that, by the industry’s own analysts’ estimates, actually matters more.
Amazon’s 2.5-billion-gallon global consumption figure, reported this year, is the company’s first-ever public disclosure of a total water number. It’s not a years-long track record, but rather a first draft.
You can access their full Sustainability Report here. https://sustainability.aboutamazon.com/reports
I looked at Google’s environmental reports, which show water consumption climbing from roughly 6 billion gallons in 2023 to 8.1 billion gallons in 2024 to 10.9 billion gallons in 2025, nearly doubling in two years, even as the company touts efficiency gains.
None of these companies’ headline efficiency metrics, the liters-per-kilowatt-hour numbers that show up in press releases and county board presentations, account for water used to generate the electricity that keeps these buildings running.
That’s the shell game, and it’s not unique to any one company. It’s the industry’s shared blind spot, and it’s the one number nobody’s required to hand over.
It’s also worth noting that these numbers come from voluntary corporate reports not audited filings.
I believe California Governor Gavin Newsom was wrong to veto legislation that would have required data centers in the state to disclose water consumption levels, as independent audits can offer a better understanding of what’s going on.
Why does this matter if the total national impact is small?
Nationally, direct data center water use is a rounding error.
By some estimates it’s around 17 billion gallons a year, or about three-tenths of one percent of the public water supply in this country. If you only look at the national average, you could convince yourself this whole fight is overblown. Some people may take that side.
But averages hide a deeper truth. Water isn’t consumed nationally. It’s consumed locally. It comes from your aquifer, your river, or your municipal treatment plant. In the towns where these campuses actually get built, the local numbers look nothing like the national ones.
SOURCE: https://www.thebrockovichreport.com/p/the-data-center-water-secret?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=ErinBrockovich%2Fmagazine%2FThe%2BBrockovich%2BReport
Tags
- Water Footprint
- IT
- California, United States
- Water from Air
- Water from Urine
- Water Accounting
- Domestic Water Use