Will the AI Boom Lead to Water and Electricity Shortages?

In arid Los Angeles, residents are banned from watering their driveways and face fines of up to $600 if they turn on their sprinklers on the wrong day.

But even if Angelenos are required to reduce their water usage, California data centers won’t even be required to disclose their water usage. Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required facilities, which can guzzle millions of gallons in a single day, to report their water usage.

Amid the artificial intelligence boom – or bubble, as seems increasingly likely – tech companies are pouring money into AI infrastructure. Spending is expected to reach billions next year. In a memo discussing his veto, Newsom wrote that given the “unprecedented demand” for data centers, he was currently “reluctant to impose rigid reporting requirements on the operational details of this sector.” In other words: why kill (or, in this case, lightly regulate) the goose that lays the golden eggs?

Data centers house the computers, servers and other hardware used to process and store digital information. With their enhanced processing capabilities, large hyperscale complexes are the preferred data centers for computationally intensive training and the use of AI models. They can cover an area of ​​more than a million square feet, or roughly the equivalent of 17 football fields. Water is used to maintain humidity and as a coolant for heat-generating machines, and as U.S. data centers have increased in size and number, their water consumption has also increased, from 5.6 billion gallons in 2014 to 17.4 billion in 2023.

Communities are already feeling the pressure. In Newton County, Georgia, a single Meta-owned center accounts for about 10 percent of all water usage. Owners near the property said The New York Times They thought the data center construction had damaged their wells: their taps were giving out brown water or no water at all. The community is also facing water shortages and prices have skyrocketed; in the future, residents may have to resort to rationing. That’s a high price to pay for Mark Zuckerberg to be able to sell AI-enabled spy glasses.

It’s no wonder that companies often remain silent about exactly how much water their facilities use. The Data Center Coalition, an industry lobbying group, opposed California’s disclosure bill, one that Newsom later vetoed. In 2021, a city in the neighboring state of Oregon sued a local newspaper to stop it from reporting on Google’s water consumption. (The $3 trillion tech giant was kind enough to foot the city’s legal bill.) After the case was finally settled, news reports revealed that Google’s data centers accounted for more than a quarter of local water consumption.

Less water-intensive cooling methods tend to use more electricity, and AI data centers already devour much of that. A standard complex uses the electricity equivalent of 100,000 homes, placing a significant demand on power grids. Utility companies pass costs on to customers: Residents near data centers have seen electricity prices rise as much as 267% over the past five years. To top it all off, data centers often emit a loud hum and can be lit up at all hours. Noisy night owls and electricity poachers: it’s hard to imagine a worse neighbor.

To keep up with increased consumption, utility companies are changing their energy plans. Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania, scene of the worst nuclear accident in American history, is restarting one of its reactors to power Microsoft data centers. In Mississippi and Georgia, coal plants once destined for abandonment will remain in operation, spewing climate-altering carbon dioxide.