Even moderately sized data centers can have an outsized local impact.
If you spend time in any even slightly AI-skeptical corners of the internet, you’ve likely come across numerous memes and posts based on data centers’ enormous thirst for water to support evaporative cooling. However, a new report from Amazon underscores just how little water all these AI data centers are consuming collectively, on a relative scale, even as individual facilities can put pressure on local water resources.
In a Thursday blog post, Amazon claims its data centers withdrew “about 2.5 billion gallons” worldwide in 2025. That figure appears extremely large at first glance, but it seems quite small compared to the 117 trillion gallons of water withdrawn in the US alone in 2015. It’s also helpful to compare Amazon’s number to statistics from more water-intensive sectors, ranging from the 3.3 trillion gallons used annually on US lawns and landscaping to the 1.3 trillion gallons consumed each year by California almond orchards, to the 531 billion gallons used annually just for US golf courses.
Amazon is, of course, just one company, and a relatively late entrant in reporting its data center water usage figures. Google data centers withdrew over 6.1 billion gallons of water in 2024, in addition to roughly 2.75 billion gallons from Microsoft and about 1.4 billion gallons from Meta in the same year.
Altogether, a 2021 Nature study estimates that all US data centers combined consumed approximately 163 billion gallons of water that year, a figure that encompasses “indirect” consumption from non-renewable energy sources. That number has undoubtedly risen in the AI-driven years since that study was released—one analysis suggests that Texas data centers alone used 25 to 49 billion gallons in 2024, and could grow to withdraw 399 billion gallons in 2030. Yet even annual data center water usage measured in the trillions would represent a figurative (and somewhat literal) drop in the bucket compared to national and global water usage figures.
Think globally, worry locally
While there is no risk of major tech companies literally draining the oceans to fuel the data centers behind their LLMs, even moderately sized data centers can have a significant impact on nearby water resources. For instance, a single Meta data center in Newton County, Georgia, now uses about 10 percent of the entire county’s water supply, according to a New York Times report from last year. Additionally, the Interstate Commission on the Potomac River Basin recently estimated that data centers account for 8 percent of total water consumption in the region, a rate that could rise to 29 percent by 2050 if the large concentration of data centers in northern Virginia continues at its current pace.
That kind of concentrated water use can place severe strain on local infrastructure and water supplies, and has led to at least one instance where a data center siphoned millions of gallons from local sources without initially paying. The local impacts can be especially severe in areas that are already water-stressed; a 2025 Business Insider report found that 40 percent of planned and existing data centers in the US are located in regions with “high” or “extremely high” water scarcity, as measured by the World Resources Institute.
In light of these concerns, the largest tech companies are keen to project an image of efficiency and responsible stewardship regarding water supplies. Amazon says it has been allowing data centers to run hotter to reduce water usage for cooling, helping it consume less water per kilowatt-hour than other major data center providers. Amazon also states it is funding “50 water projects expected to return more than 5.8 billion gallons of water annually for use by local communities,” and Google has outlined 165 water stewardship projects that it says “are expected to replenish more than 19 billion gallons of water annually by 2030.”
If all the memes and concerns about data center water consumption are helping to drive this kind of environmental responsibility among PR-focused big tech companies, that is all for the better. But if your worried friend begins to fear that AI data centers are literally causing a global water disaster, the actual numbers involved should hopefully put those concerns to rest.