{"slug": "when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket", "title": "When it comes to total water use, AI data centers are a drop in the bucket", "summary": "Amazon reported Thursday that its data centers withdrew approximately 2.5 billion gallons of water globally in 2025, a figure that represents a fraction of the 117 trillion gallons withdrawn in the U.S. alone in 2015. The company’s disclosure comes amid widespread online memes and posts warning that AI data centers are depleting water supplies through evaporative cooling, though the report shows total data center water use remains negligible compared to sectors like U.S. lawn irrigation, which consumes 3.3 trillion gallons annually.", "body_md": "If you hang out in any even vaguely AI-skeptical parts of the Internet, you’ve probably [stumbled](https://www.threads.com/@hardluckpete/post/DUl7vN3jpx5/people-say-ai-is-stealing-all-the-water-reality-check-my-entire-ai-usage-equals?hl=zh-hk) on [plenty](https://www.instagram.com/p/DZN4K3vjDb3/) of [memes](https://www.facebook.com/loudandsmart/photos/dont-mess-with-humanity-/1365982698308185/) and [posts](https://robertvanwey.substack.com/p/artificial-thirst) premised on data centers’ insatiable thirst for water to power evaporative cooling. But a new report from Amazon highlights just how little water all these AI data centers are using in aggregate, on a relative basis, even as individual data centers can strain local water supplies.\n\nIn [a Thursday blog post](https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/sustainability/amazon-data-center-water-usage), Amazon claims its data centers withdrew “about 2.5 billion gallons” globally in 2025. That number sounds incredibly large at first glance, but it looks downright puny compared to the 117 *trillion* gallons of water [withdrawn in the US alone in 2015](https://pubs.usgs.gov/publication/cir1441). It’s also useful to compare Amazon’s number to stats from more water-intensive areas, from the [3.3 trillion gallons used annually](https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html) on US lawns and landscaping to the [1.3 trillion gallons a year](https://www.c-win.org/cwin-water-blog/2024/9/23/california-almond-water-usage-updated) used in California almond orchards to the [531 billion gallons a year](https://www.gcsaa.org/who-we-are/media/news-release/2025-news-releases/2025/12/30/golf-courses-reduce-water-usage-by-31-percent-according-to-national-survey) used just for US golf courses.\n\nAmazon is just one company, of course, and a relative latecomer to reporting its data center water usage numbers. Google data centers withdrew about [more than 6.1 billion gallons of water](https://www.gstatic.com/gumdrop/sustainability/google-2025-environmental-report.pdf) in 2024, on top of [about 2.75 billion gallons from Microsoft](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/27/technology/microsoft-water-ai-data-centers.html) and [about 1.4 billion gallons from Meta](https://sustainability.atmeta.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Meta_2025-Environmental-Data-Index.pdf) in the same year.\n\nAll told, [a 2021 Nature study](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41545-021-00101-w) estimates that all US data centers combined consumed about 163 billion gallons of water that year, a number that includes “indirect” consumption from non-renewable power sources. That number has doubtlessly increased in the AI-driven years since that study was published—[one analysis](https://harcresearch.org/research/powering-texas-digital-economy-data-centers-and-the-future-of-the-grid/) estimates that Texas data centers alone used 25 to 49 billion gallons in 2024, and could grow to withdraw 399 billion gallons in 2030. But even annual data center water usage measured in the trillions would represent a figurative (and kind of literal) drop in the bucket compared to national and worldwide water usage statistics.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket", "canonical_source": "https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/06/when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket/", "published_at": "2026-06-12 16:51:38+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-12 17:43:32.248448+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-infrastructure"], "entities": ["Amazon"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/when-it-comes-to-total-water-use-ai-data-centers-are-a-drop-in-the-bucket.jsonld"}}