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acre-foot A unit of volume used to measure water; the amount of water needed to cover one acre of land (43,560 square feet) to a depth of one foot. One acre-foot is equivalent to about 1,233 m³. air cooling A data center cooling method that uses air conditi...

https://blockclubchicago.org/2025/08/28/the-great-lakes-could-be-at-risk-due-to-data-centers-powering-ai-study-warns  https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/analysis/recycled-buildings https://www.apmresearchlab.org/10x/data-centers-resource? https://www.dat...

Air cooling is a data center cooling method that uses fans and air conditioning units (often within the computer room in the form of CRAHs) to circulate cool air between IT racks, expelling the hot air from computing equipment. Considered the most traditio...

Liquid cooling is a data center cooling method that uses liquid coolants (often water) to absorb heat from computing equipment. This method can appear in a variety of ways. One type of liquid cooling, illustrated above, is called evaporative cooling, and u...

Immersion cooling is a data center cooling method where IT equipment is directly submerged in a thermally conductive but electrically non-conductive fluid (known as dielectric fluid). Heat generated by the servers is absorbed by the fluid and then tran...

In 2023 alone, US data centers consumed an estimated 17 billion gallons of water. That's 52,171 acre-feet of water, enough to cover a 10.2-mile-wide circle in a foot of water! Estimating the average cross-sectional area of a bayou channel at 2,400 square ...

Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) = Facility power (kWh)/IT equipment power (kWh) Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) = Water usage (L)/IT equipment power (kWh) Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) and Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) are ratios used to describe how e...

In hot, dry climates, the high water demand from data centers can put immense pressure on the local water supply, exacerbating the effects of drought conditions. Because data centers mostly use potable water, this puts them in direct competition with local c...

In Marseille, France, a European data center company called Interxion uses a form of liquid-based free cooling to decrease the energy required to cool its data centers. The facilities pipe water from 'La Galierie de la Mer,' a tunnel that runs from inland mi...

Image: Apple's data center in Mesa, Arizona In 2021, the City Council of Mesa, Arizona approved the construction of a new hyperscale data center that would require 1.25 million gallons of water per day, exacerbating the concerns of Mesa residents growing in...

Image: QTS is seeking to build a second data center at the property located at 2800 S. Ashland Ave. in McKinley Park. (By Lake Michigan) Chicago’s proximity to Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes basin makes it appear water-abundant, but new pressures from ...

Free cooling is a data center cooling method that takes advantage of local climate or geologic features to reduce reliance on mechanical refrigeration. Some data centers located in cool climates circulate ambient cool air to cool equipment, saving energy and w...

Just one hyperscale data center uses about 200 million gallons of water per year; enough water to fill the entire area enclosed by Rice University's inner loop to a depth of 13.85 feet!

Recent years have witnessed a shift in the U.S. data center size, with the top panel showing how the percentage of servers housed in hyperscale and large colocation centers has grown steadily since 2014, while small/medium colocation facilities have remained...

Image: A Google data center in Finland that utilizes seawater cooling Coastal areas may appear to have an abundance of water, but this does not mean they are unaffected by the massive water demands of data centers. Some coastal data centers use seawater for...