AI's Water and Electricity Use Soars In 2025 44
A new study estimates that AI systems in 2025 consumed as much electricity as New York City emits in carbon pollution and used hundreds of billions of liters of water, driven largely by power-hungry data centers and cooling needs. Researchers say the real impact is likely higher due to poor transparency from tech companies about AI-specific energy and water use. "There's no way to put an extremely accurate number on this, but it's going to be really big regardless... In the end, everyone is paying the price for this," says Alex de Vries-Gao, a PhD candidate at the VU Amsterdam Institute for Environmental Studies who published his paper today in the journal Patterns. The Verge reports: To crunch these numbers, de Vries-Gao built on earlier research that found that power demand for AI globally could reach 23GW this year -- surpassing the amount of electricity used for Bitcoin mining in 2024. While many tech companies divulge total numbers for their carbon emissions and direct water use in annual sustainability reports, they don't typically break those numbers down to show how many resources AI consumes. De Vries-Gao found a work-around by using analyst estimates, companies' earnings calls, and other publicly available information to gauge hardware production for AI and how much energy that hardware likely uses.
Once he figured out how much electricity these AI systems would likely consume, he could use that to forecast the amount of planet-heating pollution that would likely create. That came out to between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons annually. For comparison, New York City emits around 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Data centers can also be big water guzzlers, an issue that's similarly tied to their electricity use. Water is used in cooling systems for data centers to keep servers from overheating. Power plants also demand significant amounts of water needed to cool equipment and turn turbines using steam, which makes up a majority of a data center's water footprint. The push to build new data centers for generative AI has also fueled plans to build more power plants, which in turn use more water and (and create more greenhouse gas pollution if they burn fossil fuels).
AI could use between 312.5 and 764.6 billion liters of water this year, according to de Vries-Gao. That reaches even higher than a previous study conducted in 2023 that estimates that water use could be as much as 600 billion liters in 2027. "I think that's the biggest surprise," says Shaolei Ren, one of the authors of that 2023 study and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside. "[de Vries-Gao's] paper is really timely... especially as we are seeing increasingly polarized views about AI and water," Ren adds. Even with the higher projection for water use, Ren says de Vries-Gao's analysis is "really conservative" because it only captures the environmental effects of operating AI equipment -- excluding the additional effects that accumulate along the supply chain and at the end of a device's life.
Once he figured out how much electricity these AI systems would likely consume, he could use that to forecast the amount of planet-heating pollution that would likely create. That came out to between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons annually. For comparison, New York City emits around 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Data centers can also be big water guzzlers, an issue that's similarly tied to their electricity use. Water is used in cooling systems for data centers to keep servers from overheating. Power plants also demand significant amounts of water needed to cool equipment and turn turbines using steam, which makes up a majority of a data center's water footprint. The push to build new data centers for generative AI has also fueled plans to build more power plants, which in turn use more water and (and create more greenhouse gas pollution if they burn fossil fuels).
AI could use between 312.5 and 764.6 billion liters of water this year, according to de Vries-Gao. That reaches even higher than a previous study conducted in 2023 that estimates that water use could be as much as 600 billion liters in 2027. "I think that's the biggest surprise," says Shaolei Ren, one of the authors of that 2023 study and an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Riverside. "[de Vries-Gao's] paper is really timely... especially as we are seeing increasingly polarized views about AI and water," Ren adds. Even with the higher projection for water use, Ren says de Vries-Gao's analysis is "really conservative" because it only captures the environmental effects of operating AI equipment -- excluding the additional effects that accumulate along the supply chain and at the end of a device's life.
Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score:2)
I get that the heat has to go somewhere, but there are ways to build a system that doesn't "consume" much water.
Building these kinds of systems may cost more cash up-front but the cost to the people in your state/country (which becomes a political/regulatory cost to you down the road) of using water in areas where water is scarce needs to be factored in.
Re: Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score:2)
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OK run the coolant through giant refrigerators once it's outside. This is easy.
Uh, I take it you don't actually know how refrigerators work? Or is this intended as ironic?
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They use evaporation towers. You "consume" water in liquid form and produce water in gas form (humidity).
So the water molecules are not destroyed, but the water does not return to the water source, it dissipates into the air.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score:2)
Donâ(TM)t forget that water vapor is a greenhouse gas, much worse than CO2 is
Re: Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score:2)
Why ignore cloud albedo?
Re: Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score:3)
They are building them. I think the early âoeAI Datacenterâ was built for size, not efficiency. Regular AC, because it was industry standard.
Then they saw how much power is being consumed, how much their chips are being slammed for calculations and realized this was unsustainable.
lol
Now the designs are all-in for efficiency. Zero water (aka closed loop) are the next generation being built right now. More efficient chips, efficiency for the infrastructure, even on backup power generation.
So yeah ,
Re:Why not closed-loop water cooling? (Score:5, Informative)
Water consumption doesn't matter much (or at all) near these places:
1. Colombia river basin
2. Mississippi River
3. The entire east coast from Virgina, south to Florida
There's no incentive to conserve water in these areas, access to fresh water is limitless. half to three quarters of data centers are in areas with no problems with water access; the hysterics around water use is being weaponized, rather than rationalized. If you have a data center in California or Arizona, water is more of an issue, but they often use more efficient cooling loops there.
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Like here in Europe several are planned (or have already been build) in areas where fresh drinking quality water is becoming a scarce recourse.
A cooling system with evaporation towers is better than dumping it in an already heated river, building the centers in populated areas and using the heat output for district heating is a solution that works in winter time, this solves energy and water use issues.
But then you still need a s
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Lawn grass and other urban landscape irrigation in Texas use approximately 1.9 million to 4 million acre-feet of water per year, which is between 619 billion and 1.3 trillion gallons annually. The total water used for all irrigation in Texas, which includes agriculture, is about 7.6 million acre-feet per year (over 2.4 trillion gallons).
The exact total for 2024 is not available, but estimates project that Texas data centers will use nearly 50 billion gallons of water this year
10% of lawn usage not even cou
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One of the reasons is, how do you cool the closed-loop water? Using an open loop secondary system is one possibility. And for ecology, the open loop does not need to use potable water, gray water is fine for that and many systems already run on gray water.
How much water is that, anyways? (Score:5, Informative)
It sounds like they're permanently destroying water or something. Many datacenters line the colombia river, which is both an excellent hydroelectric and limitless water supply, and then the other big cluster is in the SE near Virgina and into the Carolinas, which are frequently flooding,
764.6 billion liters of water is about the same water usage as NYC uses in 200 days
764.6 billion liters of water is about 8 days worth of water used by California agriculture
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Suppose that water headed for California almond farms instead was diverted to Arizona golf courses. What's the problem, right? Not like the water was destroyed or something.
You may as well ask, what's the problem with inflation? Not like money is destroyed when you spend it.
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Re: How much water is that, anyways? (Score:2)
"That's the problem with inflation, it's grand theft"
Since we all acknowledge that markets can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent, why stick to quaint old fairy tales like the quantuty theory of money, especially as there was practically no inflation, despite mainstream predictions by the Fed itself, after the 400% increase in base money?
Remember Fischer Black in "Noise"?
"the price level and rate of inflation are literally indeterminate. They are whatever people think they will be. They are
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Think about it for a minute and see if you can come up with any reason that potable water run through cooling pipes would somehow cease to be potable. Then tell me if it can't just be returned to the clean water supply.
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I also maintain that this will not, in fact, happen.
This is the same game politicians constantly play. Sure, passing this law means closing the factory which will will put thousands out of work. But we could offer retraining opportunities! We won't, but we could.
So they basically are (Score:3)
None of this is necessary but it is cheaper and these data centers are already unprofitable right now and not replacing enough wages to make them profitable.
So yes molecularly speaking the water still exists but it's not in a state usable by human beings and we do not have the capacity to put it back in that stat
Re: So they basically are (Score:2)
I don't think anyone expected water exposed to the atmosphere in a waterfall like fashion to be re-added to the public water supply. I'm curious where you live that you haven't seen evaporative cooling in person. Maybe you live in Norway or Iceland. The water that doesn't evaporate is recycled, and when the resivor drops below level X, it adds more municipal water to the system. I hope this clears some things up for you about 100 year old cooling system design
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Because that's the way we can say Trump is evil. Typical NPR democrat lies by omission nonsense...
There's a whole documentary on the topic of lie-by-omission news coverage you can watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
You can Google this (Score:2)
They treat it with chemicals to prevent it from corroding the pipes. Removing those chemicals would be extremely expensive.
I think one of the major problems is people can't wrap their heads around why they aren't going to have electricity and water because there isn't any real good reason for it. And since we all grew up with civilization the idea that the wealthiest capitalists on the planet are going to eliminate both capitalism and civiliza
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It's an already-solved pr
There is a new way to do cooling (Score:2)
Combined Cooling Heat and Power (CCHP) uses gas compressors to create cooling from waste energy, it saves some energy and a lot of water.
But I agree that AI systems are wasteful and the people building them need to find better, more efficient processes.
You will do what you always do (Score:3)
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Guess you haven't been keeping up with the news, where dear leader is preparing to invade Venezuela... who by the way has more oil than Iraq. It's not about drugs or anything else, it's about oil.
Well, also as a distraction from basically everything else.
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Meaning to say, start doing something about the market for illicit drugs.
No biggie then. (Score:4, Insightful)
Once he figured out how much electricity these AI systems would likely consume, he could use that to forecast the amount of planet-heating pollution that would likely create. That came out to between 32.6 and 79.7 million tons annually. For comparison, New York City emits around 50 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.
So one big city's worth for the entire planet? It actually does not seem so bad when you put it that way.
The AI Water problem is fake (Score:2)
Units (Score:2)
consumed as much electricity as New York City emits in carbon pollution
I didn't know pollution was measured in kilowatt-hours.
Since when is CO2 a measure of wattage? (Score:2)
The world shoudn't tolerate this (Score:2)
AI tokens are horribly inefficient to produce. The energy inefficiency of a rack of AI processors sort of reminds me of the early days of computing with the Eniac completed in 1945 (150 kW for both), The problem is, there are way more AI racks today then there were Eniacs. If electricity is scarce, then inefficient users should be charged more in order to incentivize them to become more efficient.
Personally, I don't think GPU's are going to be the way that AGI is achieved. They're just too inefficient. The
Yes, we're being forced into pverty (Score:2)
Higher prices for water, energy, RAM, SSD, real estate, etc.
All so that they can build the AIs - which will in turn take our jobs.
It's a viscous circle.
Water, water everywhere, nor a drop to drink (Score:2)
It goes without saying that water is a critical resource. And its ease of access IS shrinking.