Data center water use falls into two categories: direct and indirect. This report examines data centers’ indirect water use, which refers to water withdrawn and consumed off-site at power plants to generate the electricity that powers data centers.
Key Points
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Rising Water Needs: Roughly 70% of Wisconsin’s water withdrawals can be attributed to power generation. Data centers’ increased power demand is expected to make that number rise.
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Using a City’s Worth of Water: If data centers use non-renewable energy sources, a single data center’s off-site water use could rival that of an entire Wisconsin city.
- Pinpointing Precise Water Use Proves Difficult: Quantifying indirect water use of data centers is challenging due to limited transparency from developers, tech companies, and public utilities. Without knowing the type of fuel and cooling system used at each power plant, or the actual consumption rates of power for each data center, we cannot precisely assess off-site water use.
Summary
Tech companies have been quick to minimize the water needs of their AI data center projects in Wisconsin, pointing to on-site cooling technology that will recycle water or use alternative cooling methods on all but the hottest days of the year. But according to a new analysis from Clean Wisconsin, the intensive energy demands of data centers will spur a significant increase in water withdrawals in our state—even if water recycling or other cooling technology is used at data center sites.
Important Takeaways
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Twice As Much Water Use as All of Green Bay: The Vantage data center in Port Washington will reportedly have power needs reaching 3.5 gigawatts (GW). If non-renewable energy sources are used to meet those needs, its off-site water use would be at least 54 millions gallons a day. That’s more than double the amount used by every home, business and manufacturer in the City of Green Bay.
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General Power Plant Estimates Provide Insights: While we don’t have specific water-use information for power plants and data centers in the state, we do have general water use information for various types of electricity-generating technologies that could be used to power data centers. Such figures help us estimate the water demands we could expect from different operating scenarios.
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Data Center Developers Remain Tight-Lipped: Recent data center project announcements have made lofty claims about their capabilities while neglecting to disclose expected power-generation needs, raising questions about how projects might impact energy and water use.
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Clean Energy Offers Alternative: Clean energy like wind and solar don’t require any water withdrawals, meaning they could help address the concern. It’s unclear how much wind and solar would need to be developed in Wisconsin to satisfy data center deamand.
