Do Data Centers Use a Lot of Water?
Water use at data centers comes mostly from evaporative cooling. The volumes can be significant in hot, arid regions — but they vary widely by cooling design.
- Last updated
- 2026-04-15
- Reading time
- 5 min
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How cooling water is consumed
Evaporative ('adiabatic') cooling sprays water across heat exchangers; the water that evaporates is not recovered. Closed-loop and air-cooled designs avoid this loss but use more electricity.
Operators report Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) in liters per kWh of IT energy. Best-in-class hyperscale sites are below 0.2 L/kWh; some older or warmer-region sites exceed 1.5 L/kWh.
Why location matters
A 100 MW campus using evaporative cooling in Arizona may consume hundreds of millions of gallons per year, while the same workload in Oregon using free-air cooling can be near zero.
Several operators have committed to 'water-positive' goals by 2030, replenishing more water than they consume through watershed projects.
Frequently asked questions
Do all data centers use water?
No. Air-cooled and closed-loop designs use little or no water but typically use more electricity. There is a trade-off between water and energy use.
Is data center water use regulated?
Permits and water rights are typically handled at the state and county level. Some jurisdictions in the southwest now require water-use disclosures for large new facilities.