{"id":747901,"date":"2026-06-19T19:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/747901\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T19:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T19:31:09","slug":"ai-data-centres-voracious-thirst-for-water-makes-their-environmental-footprint-even-bigger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/747901\/","title":{"rendered":"AI data centres\u2019 voracious thirst for water makes their environmental footprint even bigger"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Douglas County Google data centre complex in Lithia Springs, Ga. The company’s massive Nebraska data centre consumed 1.5 billion litres of water in 2024.Mike Stewart\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

The enormous Google data centre in Papillion, Neb., consumed 1.5 billion litres of water in 2024 to cool its power-mad AI activity, according to local newspaper reports. That\u2019s the equivalent of more than 600 Olympic swimming pools, and that\u2019s just one location. The United States has thousands of other data centres of various sizes.<\/p>\n

Environmental assessments of the centres tend to focus on their electricity use and carbon footprint, both of which are shockingly high and rising. Less well known about the dark side of AI is their vast water and land use. The world\u2019s fastest-growing industry \u2013 one that has thrilled investors who bought into the SpaceX initial public offering and others \u2013 is also turning into one of the biggest threats to natural resources. <\/p>\n

Cities and towns that were once begging for the right to clear forests to build data centres the size of airports are now having second thoughts. <\/p>\n

Early this month, the city council of Seattle, home to Amazon and Microsoft, passed a one-year moratorium<\/a> on their construction. The unanimous decision came after an outcry about their water consumption and pressure on prices and the electricity grid. The national grid operator in Ireland, where data centres consumed more than 20 per cent of the country\u2019s total electricity output in 2023, has suspended new approvals in and near Dublin until 2028. Residents of some U.S. municipalities are taking legal action to try to stop the endless rollout of data centres or get existing ones to tone down the noise and vibrations from their power-generation systems. <\/p>\n

Hamilton advances proposed data centre moratorium in city council<\/a><\/p>\n

Remember Anthropic\u2019s motto for training AI models? \u201cHelpful, honest, and harmless\u201d \u2013 admirable goals. But the data centres certainly aren\u2019t harmless to the environment.<\/p>\n

A new report by the UN\u2019s University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, whose home is in Richmond Hill, Ont., said that global data centres\u2019 water footprint by 2030 will equal the basic water needs of the 1.3 billion people in sub-Saharan Africa; their land footprint will exceed 14,500 square kilometres, which is roughly twice the size of megacities such as Jakarta.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s not forget their power consumption. The report says the data centres will consume 945 terawatt-hours of electricity a year \u2013 triple the collective consumption of Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nigeria, home to a combined 650 million people. \u201cThe report finds that AI\u2019s environmental cost is being systematically mismeasured,\u201d the authors said. \u201cMost existing assessments focus on the carbon emissions associated with training large [language] models. Yet every kilowatt-hour of electricity used to train or run an AI system also carries a water footprint, from cooling and power generation, and a land footprint, from energy infrastructure and supply chains. These three footprints do not move in the same direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the AI industry, the environmental game is trade-offs. A smaller carbon footprint often comes with a larger water footprint. Let\u2019s say a data centre converts its main power source from coal to bioenergy. Doing so, according to the report, can cut carbon output by about 70 per cent. But the water footprint could rise 30-fold while the land footprint could rise 100-fold, the UN report said. <\/p>\n

CPP Investments commits $1-billion to data centres in partnership with India\u2019s CtrlS<\/a><\/p>\n

How can that be? Bioenergy comes from biomass, such as wood pellets, trees or tree waste and agricultural residues. Growing this organic feedstock requires massive amounts of irrigation water and land use. That\u2019s why going low-carbon does not necessarily translate into low water and land use; the opposite usually happens. <\/p>\n

Data centres are water guzzlers because many of them use cooling towers for evaporative cooling \u2013 similar to sweating \u2013 to dissipate the massive amounts of heat generated by the servers. Only a relatively small amount of the water used in the process is recovered, though the technology is improving somewhat and recovery rates should rise in the next decade or so. <\/p>\n

The problem is that some of the centres are being built in areas that have small or irregular supplies of water, intensifying their water stress. Quer\u00e9taro, in central Mexico, is known as the country\u2019s data centre capital. Big Tech companies have filled the city with warehouse-like buildings full of computer servers. It\u2019s also a drought-prone zone and residents fear that AI\u2019s water requirements will come first. The UN report notes that in Uruguay, plans for a water-intensive data centre coincided with a 2023 drought that depleted Montevideo\u2019s freshwater supplies. <\/p>\n

The AI rush means that data centre growth may be just getting started. In the U.S., President Donald Trump is promoting the construction of the centres for fear of losing the AI lead to China, though he has urged Big Tech to \u201cpay their own way\u201d on electricity costs to protect consumers. While some U.S. municipalities are reining in their data centre bonanza, many are not, if only because the centres produce tax revenue. <\/p>\n

Various polls say that only about a quarter of Americans think AI will improve their lives. If the centres raise their electricity prices, trigger water shortages and gobble up land, consumers\u2019 resistance to Big Tech\u2019s data centres will intensify. The debate over this burgeoning industry\u2019s environmental problems trade-offs should have happened years ago. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: The Douglas County Google data centre complex in Lithia Springs, Ga. The company’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":747902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-747901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=747901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/747901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/747902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=747901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=747901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=747901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}