Data Center

Data centers use vast amounts of water primarily for evaporative cooling, spraying it into the air or over coils to cool hot air generated by servers in order to keep the equipment from failing. The largest data centers can consume between 1 and 5 million gallons of water daily, with consumption rising during the summer.

Data centers currently consume nearly 5% of the electricity generated in the United States and estimates are that the amount will more than double over the next five years. They could consume up to 12% of our electricity by 2030.

Modern data centers have been around since the 1990s, but they were largely unknown to most of us over their first 20 years. From about 2010 until just a few years ago, cloud computing and various mobile and software services became commonplace. The number of data centers grew from hundreds to a couple of thousand. The current third era of data centers, running AI training and inference, has exploded the number of centers and, especially, the amount of power they consume. In 2005, data centers consumed 20 GW of power. Last year, that number exceeded 114 GW with an annual growth rate of over 17%.

WAMC's David Guistina in conversation with Colin Kinniburgh, Reporter at New York Focus, about a datacenter that received over $70 million in tax breaks to create one job.

Data centers consume large amounts of energy. In 2023, they consumed 4.4% of the nation’s electricity and that percentage is projected to double or triple by 2028, in part due to the proliferation of AI. Much of that power is used to operate computing equipment like servers but nearly half of it is used for cooling systems for the equipment.