The University of Texas at Austin shared new research earlier this month that revealed Texas’ data center water use could make up 3% to 9% of Texas’ overall water use by 2040 as production ramps up statewide. That estimate accounts for both data centers’ use of water as a cooling mechanism as well as their water needs for power production. Right now, data centers’ water usage accounts for fewer than 1% of the state’s total water use.
Researchers’ forecasts have been shaped by factors such as industry growth, cooling technologies used in those processes as well as the specific source of electricity used to power Texas data centers. That estimated figure could potentially surpass the total water use from Texas’ manufacturing industry, which sits at 7% of statewide figures, UT’s research noted.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the water use for data centers,” Mariam Arzumanyan, a postdoctoral fellow at the Bureau of Economic Geology research unit within the UT Jackson School of Geosciences, said in the May release. “People don’t know the scale of how much water is going to be needed. There is not a unified understanding of the technologies used for cooling, or how much water that technology would use.”
Currently, more than 400 data centers are either operating or under development here in Texas, UT researchers revealed, adding that figure could change depending on whether all of those facilities lingering in the planning stages come to life. While water usage at data centers is twofold, researchers zeroed in on the water needed to create the energy powering these developments; with data centers dependent on plenty of power, that could increase natural gas, coal or nuclear energy production, which already amounts to 5% of the state’s water usage.
Researchers outlined a slew of policy recommendations for state leadership, developers and municipalities, including: