There is a real and growing concern over the demand for electricity from artificial intelligence data centers, but in the end, the market will surely balance supply with demand. Despite what some doomsayers may claim, America has deep energy resources, including the world’s largest coal reserves, with which to power the AI revolution. What the world may be short on, though, is water, at least at a reasonable price. Researchers at UC Riverside have raised the alarm over AI water consumption, explaining that AI water consumption comes in three buckets:

2.2.1 Scope-1 Water Usage Nearly all the server energy is converted into heat, which must then be removed from the data center server room to avoid overheating. This process involves two sequential stages: server-level cooling followed by facility-level cooling.

In the server-level cooling stage, heat is transferred from the servers to the facility or a heat exchanger, typically using either air or liquid cooling methods (e.g., direct-to-chip cooling or immersion cooling), which do not evaporate or consume water. In general, new data centers dedicated to AI training often rely on liquid cooling due to the high server power densities.

In the facility-level cooling stage, heat is rejected from the data center facility to the outside environment. While there are various cooling methods, water-intensive cooling towers and water evaporation-assisted air cooling are two common approaches used in many data centers, including those operated by major technology companies [1, 4]. Data Center Chilled Water Warm Water Pump Cooling Tower Server Rack Water CRAH Source Cooling Tower Heat Exchanger ChatGPT AlphaGO Power Plant Scope-1 Water Scope-2 Water Figure 1: An example of data center’s operational water usage: on-site scope-1 water usage for data center cooling (via cooling towers in the example), and off-site scope-2 water usage for electricity generation. The icons for AI models are only for illustration purposes.

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Scope-2 Water Usage In many countries, thermoelectric power is among the top sectors in terms of water withdrawal and water consumption [8]. Thus, similarly to scope-2 carbon emissions, data centers are accountable for off-site scope2 water usage associated with electricity consumption, which forms part of the “true water cost of data centers,” as highlighted by the recent U.S. data center energy report [1]. Different power plants use different amounts of water for each kWh generation, depending on the cooling techniques. Typically, water withdrawal due to hydropower generation is excluded, but water consumption due to increased water evaporation rates from hydropower generation is included [1]. For electricity generation, the U.S. national average water withdrawal and consumption are estimated at about 43.8 L/kWh [20] and 3.1 L/kWh [8], respectively. Meta’s self-reported scope-2 water consumption for its global data center fleet was 3.7 L/kWh (i.e., 55,475 megaliters divided by 14,975,435 MWh) in 2023 [18]. 2.2.3

Scope-3 Water Usage AI chip and server manufacturing uses a huge amount of water [21, 22]. For example, ultrapure water is needed for wafer fabrication and water is also needed for keeping semiconductor plants cool. Importantly, the discharged water may contain toxic chemicals and/or hazardous wastes. While water recycling at semiconductor plants can effectively reduce water withdrawal, the recycling rate in many cases remains low, e.g., the average recycling rate for wafer plants and semiconductor plants in Singapore are 45% and 23%, respectively [22]. Although largely obscure, scope-3 water usage is likely significant [21]. For instance, Apple reports that its supply chain accounts for 99% of its total water footprint [23].

It is important to recognize that, unlike agriculture whose water footprint is mostly green (i.e., water stored in soil and used by plants), the majority of AI’s water footprint is blue water extracted from rivers, lakes, or groundwater, which is directly accessible for human use but often more limited in availability.

Water is a top-tier concern not only for the economy, but for your own survival. If you haven’t already taken steps to protect your own water supplies and prepare your family for a world with scarce water, immediately click here to download Your Survival Guy’s special report, Emergency Water Storage: How Much, Containers, Purification & More.