The largest data centers can guzzle millions of gallons of fresh water a day. Roughly 40% are located in the most water-stressed areas of the country, Business Insider found.

Amazon, Microsoft, and Google’s push to create data centers in some of the world’s driest areas threatens to deepen a looming water crisis. An investigation by SourceMaterial and The Guardian ...

A Microsoft data center in Goodyear, Arizona, directly uses about 56 million gallons of municipal potable water annually — about the same as 670 homes. Still, it’s substantially less than what ...

A river with low levels of water flows under Highway 65 near Bondurant, Iowa. Iowa is suffering through a prolonged drought that heightens concerns about the water use by the state's data centers.

Aminu Abdullahi/TechRepublic Tech giants including Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are fuelling water consumption concerns as they build AI data centers in drought-prone regions, new investigations ...

A 2024 federal report found data centers consumed about 4.4% of the nation’s electricity in 2023 and that could nearly triple to 12% by 2028. They can also be water-intensive buildings.

Some of them are now reconsidering. Since 2010, Virginia has exempted large data centers from its state sales and use tax. It’s now home to the largest data center market in the world.

By 2028, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory forecasts that U.S. data centers could use as much as 12% of the nation's electricity. The reason: generative AI. Since 2022, AI innovation by four ...

Out of a list of 23 data centers provided by the Las Vegas Valley Water District, the city of North Las Vegas and the city of Henderson, Google’s site had the highest estimated water use in 2024 ...

Data is also available via the three pillars of sustaining water resources (this includes data on the quantity and quality of surface and groundwater, water scarcity, and transboundary issues), ...

Data centers’ water needs Asked whether his facility could serve as a backdrop for the next James Bond flick, Swenson gave a tacit chuckle. But there’s a reason data centers like his are ...

Google’s data centers in The Dalles use nearly three times more water than they did five years ago and now account for more than a quarter of all the city’s water use.