High water usage in AI data centers

Snigdha Sinha, et al.
Wed, 29 Apr 2026 15:30:00 PDT

Over the past few years, AI has become more prevalent in society. Its usage is a lot more commonplace, particularly in workplace environments, and naturally, it comes with a lot of debates on the ethics of using AI. One of these such debates stems from the high water consumption of data centers, which has become an increasingly prominent issue as public awareness of the issues regarding AI grows. People are worried about the sheer amount of water that is wasted through AI usage, since it can harmfully affect the water supply of communities near these centers, causing droughts and contamination. To investigate this major issue, we plan to consult as many sources as possible to reach a conclusion about the total water usage of AI data centers. Some certain sources that we have in mind are primary sources, such as from the EESI (Environmental Energy Study Institute), with actual statistics collected from these companies, which we will then analyze and collect in a readable and coherent format. Our secondary sources include news articles and various other compilations of information, which we will also summarize and use to draw our conclusions. We will present this information as a slideshow summarizing our research, methods, and major conclusions that we gathered from our primary, secondary and tertiary sources.