TechBuyer’s Astrid Wynne argues that as AI drives up cooling demand, water stewardship should turn into a core design precept – not an afterthought.
As synthetic intelligence accelerates demand for information centre capability, the dialog round sustainability is shifting. Vitality effectivity has lengthy dominated the agenda, however water, the silent useful resource underpinning cooling programs, has emerged as a crucial concern.
Scoping the issue on web site and all through operations, and offering sensible steerage to keep away from further pressure on freshwater use, have been key goals of The Information Centre Alliance’s Drowning in Data finest observe paper, revealed in October 2025. Developed by main trade consultants, the paper explains learn how to keep away from freshwater use, learn how to account for the water footprint of vitality use, and learn how to maximise water effectivity in cooling programs.
Rising consciousness of water shortage
Water shortage is now not a distant risk. At this time, 4 billion individuals expertise extreme water stress for not less than one month annually, according to a 2025 World Economic Forum report. Within the UK, the deficit between the infrastructure capability to supply clear water and the calls for positioned on it by agriculture, housing and industrial wants is within the billions of litres a day. The rising variety of information centres, and reviews of their on-site water use, started to boost alarm bells within the mainstream press in early 2025.
With Keir Starmer’s announcement of projected ‘AI Progress Zones’ early within the yr got here articles from the BBC raising concern that the UK’s AI ambitions could lead to water shortages. Whereas it’s true that high-density computing drives up cooling necessities, there are additionally quite a few applied sciences to deal with this.
Massive evaporative cooling towers, which may eat tens of 1000’s of cubic metres a yr, should not well-liked within the UK. By August, a techUK report had discovered that half of England’s information centres now use waterless cooling. Different reviews additionally urged that used water could be deployed to cool data centres.
Business steerage
Simply as with carbon emissions, information centre water consumption is a matter each on web site and thru the vitality provide chain. The authors of the Drowning in Information paper recognised this early on and structured the steerage round water effectivity within the cooling system; the kind of water drawn on web site and the way it may be handled; and the water footprint of the vitality provide.
The paper exhibits that operators, distributors and policymakers are collaborating to deal with water use with the identical rigour utilized to vitality effectivity—and recognises that it’s a system with many transferring elements.
The basics of water stewardship
The paper outlines six actionable ideas for decreasing water affect. It additionally recognises that these are interrelated, and that they’ve a relationship with vitality effectivity. A short overview is given under:
- Consider cooling programs
Not all cooling programs are created equal. Designs for a 5 MW information centre in London that contain cooling towers might be round 38,000 m³/yr, whereas adiabatic coolers might be round 800 m³/yr, and dry coolers would lead to no direct water use. Deciding on the fitting expertise can lower water use by orders of magnitude. - Minimise the water footprint of the vitality used
Past direct consumption, electrical energy era carries an embedded water value. No research have but outlined the proportion for AI workloads, however research on one other intensive compute operation – Bitcoin – suggest that most of this sits in the energy footprint. Maximising vitality effectivity, and utilizing vitality provides with decrease water footprints, is a key a part of good water stewardship. - Design with the encompassing surroundings in thoughts
Cooling programs should take into consideration the encompassing surroundings so as to steadiness financial savings in direct water use (by diminished cooling demand) with oblique water waste by elevated electrical energy use total. - Design with non-potable water in thoughts
Gray water programs and rainwater harvesting can offset potable water demand, decreasing pressure on municipal provides. Nonetheless, completely different water qualities require completely different ranges of electrical energy to make them appropriate for cooling programs, and this must be thought-about. - Apply programs considering
The encompassing group’s wants additionally play a component. In water-stressed areas, decreasing direct water use can be a precedence. In cooler, wetter areas, precedence could shift in the direction of the advantages of warmth era from the info centre—captured by direct-to-chip cooling and fed into district heating programs. - Introduce round financial system ideas for {hardware} refresh
Extending IT tools life and selling reuse reduces embodied water in manufacturing – a hidden however significant factor of whole water affect. In response to the Inexperienced Electronics Council, the manufacture of a single server requires 1,500–2,000 gallons of water.
The place subsequent for water use within the information centre sector
Persevering with press protection in latest months exhibits that information centres are underneath scrutiny for his or her water use in a method that different sectors should not. A December 2025 article in The Guardian is one such instance. With researchers more and more turning in the direction of the water footprint of AI, mainstream media is changing into extra conscious of oblique water consumption because of vitality use.
No comparable tales flow into about heavy trade or manufacturing, that are extra established and extra more likely to fly underneath the radar. Whether or not or not that is truthful is a moot level; water is the following frontier in information centre sustainability. Because the trade scales to fulfill digital demand, water stewardship should turn into a core design precept, not an afterthought.
The Drowning in Information paper gives perception into how the sector can tackle this with an method that balances operational resilience with environmental duty. Nonetheless, it’s simply the beginning of a protracted, complicated technique of understanding impacts and balancing competing calls for. The Information Centre Alliance welcomes recommendations and collaborations that may transfer the dialog ahead.
You’ll be able to learn the complete paper and be a part of the dialogue at dcauk.org.
