New York: About two-thirds of new data centers built or in development since 2022 in the United States are in places already gripped by high levels of water stress — while these facilities are popping up all over the country, five states alone account for 72 percent of the new centers in high-stress areas, reported Bloomberg News on Thursday.
“Tech giants are racing to expand with new — and larger — data centers to support AI, consuming more resources, including water,” noted the report. “That only adds to concerns that communities facing water shortages will have to compete with data center operators to access clean water.”
The data centers that power artificial intelligence consume immense amounts of water to cool hot servers and, indirectly, from the electricity needed to run these facilities, according to the report.
The problem has been years in the making. Some tech companies are trying to find ways to address it, without creating other environmental drawbacks. Meanwhile, the proportion of data centers in water-stressed regions is at a record high, it said.
More than 160 new artificial intelligence data centers have sprung up across the United States in the past three years in places with high competition for scarce water resources, according to data from the World Resources Institute, a non-profit research organization, and market intelligence firm DC Byte. That’s a 70 percent increase from the prior three-year period, it added.
