{"id":510241,"date":"2026-03-08T01:01:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T01:01:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/510241\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T01:01:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T01:01:20","slug":"us-data-centers-could-require-as-much-water-as-new-york-city-by-2030-study-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/510241\/","title":{"rendered":"US Data Centers Could Require as Much Water as New York City by 2030, Study Shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI is incredibly thirsty<\/a>. The data centers<\/a> that run these models already use massive amounts of water, and by 2030, those in the U.S. could require enough additional water capacity to rival New York City\u2019s daily supply.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s according to a new study led by Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside. The findings\u2014which have not yet been peer reviewed but are publicly available on the preprint server arXiv<\/a>\u2014show that limited public water capacity is emerging as a critical bottleneck to data center growth.<\/p>\n

To avoid burdening local ratepayers, tech companies are partnering with communities to fund water infrastructure upgrades, often<\/a> spending<\/a> hundreds of millions of dollars. \u201cThose companies are profit driven, right? So I think clearly there is something wrong,\u201d Ren told Gizmodo.<\/p>\n

Why so thirsty? <\/p>\n

Data centers operate continuously, generating<\/a> lots of heat from dense concentrations of servers, networking equipment, and other forms of IT infrastructure. Liquid cooling techniques are the most efficient way to prevent overheating and system failure, but they tend to be highly water intensive<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Tech companies will often argue that by using \u201cclosed-loop\u201d cooling systems, their data centers recycle most of the water they use and minimize consumption. But even these systems can consume huge amounts of water because many rely on evaporative cooling towers to transfer heat outside of the facility.<\/p>\n

For example, peak daily water demand\u2014the amount required during the hottest days of the year\u2014for a large state-of-the-art data center using evaporative cooling can often exceed 1 million gallons per day, and for some planned facilities it may reach 8 million gallons per day, according to the study.<\/p>\n

The water bottleneck <\/p>\n

Public water systems are engineered to reliably meet maximum demand at all times, so a data center\u2019s peak water usage is a critical factor in infrastructure planning, system resilience, and operational reliability. Despite this, most operators only disclose their total annual water use. To assess the peak water demand of U.S. data centers, Ren and his colleagues analyzed a wealth of data from public sources, including government records and water utility databases.<\/p>\n

This revealed that if the current water use intensity persists, U.S. data centers will require between 697 million and 1.45 billion gallons per day of new peak water capacity by 2030. That\u2019s comparable to the typical daily water supply of New York City. Building this additional capacity could cost between $10 billion and $58 billion, with much of the financial burden falling on the communities hosting data centers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a \u201cvery conservative\u201d estimate, Ren said. His team\u2019s calculations assume a peak-to-average daily water use ratio of just 4.5, which is at the low end of the spectrum.<\/p>\n

This presents numerous problems for the tech sector. Insufficient water capacity could directly impact the feasibility and efficiency of data center projects, leading to increased costs, delays, and scalebacks. It could also lead to operational inefficiencies, as data centers often must switch to dry cooling\u2014using air instead of water\u2014when water becomes unavailable. This is far less efficient and increases electricity demand, further straining the grid during summer peaks.<\/p>\n

Ren and his colleagues do have some ideas about how to address the growing water capacity demand of U.S. data centers. Firstly, they emphasize the importance of requiring data centers to report their peak demand, not just total annual usage. They also recommend developing corporate-community partnerships to fund infrastructure upgrades so that residents don\u2019t shoulder all of the burden.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see any ways for them to afford this type of upgrade,\u201d Ren said. \u201cWe need corporate funding and support.\u201d<\/p>\n

As data centers continue to proliferate across the country, the tech sector will be forced to contend with this often overlooked bottleneck. If nothing changes, these companies will face the consequences alongside the communities they\u2019re impacting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI is incredibly thirsty. The data centers that run these models already use massive amounts of water, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,7258,74,32000],"class_list":{"0":"post-510241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-data-centers","12":"tag-technology","13":"tag-water-conservation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}