The AI boom is spurring demand for data centers, which in turn are increasing water consumption (used to cool the computing equipment inside them). Virginia, home to the world's largest concentration of data centers, is set to see its water usage jump by nearly two-thirds between 2019 and 2023, from 1.13 billion gallons to 1.85 billion gallons, according to the FT.
It's a trend that's happening around the world, and many say it's unsustainable. Data center giant Microsoft says 42% of the water it consumes in 2023 will come from “water-stressed areas.” Google, which owns the world's largest data centers, said this year that 15% of its freshwater withdrawals come from “severely water-stressed” areas.
Why can't data centers recycle water in a closed loop system? While many data centers do, much of the water consumed is reserved for humidity control and evaporates. Unhumidified air, especially in dry regions, can be a strong conductor of static electricity, which is generally bad for computers.