Data centers could use 100 times less water by moving to windy states

Data centers are thirsty. In 2023 alone, U.S. facilities pulled 17 billion gallons of water directly from the ground and local sources just to cool their servers. But that's only the visible part of the problem. The real water cost hides in the electricity grid: power plants need another 211 billion gallons to generate the energy these centers demand. That's over 10 times more water, consumed invisibly across the country.

As artificial intelligence and cloud computing expand, both numbers are climbing. But researchers at Cornell University have found something encouraging: where you build a data center matters far more than most companies realize. Location could reduce the combined environmental footprint by up to 100 times.

"Location really matters," said Fengqi You, an energy systems engineering professor at Cornell and co-author of the study. The insight is straightforward but powerful: build data centers where renewable energy is abundant and the power grid is clean.

The hidden water cost of electricity

Servers generate enormous heat. Data centers circulate water through cooling systems constantly to prevent meltdown. But over 70% of a facility's water footprint never touches the building. It evaporates in distant power plants—coal, gas, and nuclear facilities that convert water into steam to spin turbines. Hydroelectric dams lose water through evaporation from their reservoirs. The electricity grid's water thirst is the real problem.

"That's why the electricity power grid mix is very critical," You explained. If a data center draws power from a coal plant in a water-stressed region, it's consuming water hundreds of miles away. If it draws from a wind farm on the Texas plains, that water cost nearly disappears.

The Cornell team mapped data center energy and water use across the U.S. to find the most sustainable locations for future growth. Their conclusion surprised no one paying attention to energy geography: West Texas emerged as the strongest candidate. Despite its arid landscape, the region has sparse population, available groundwater for direct cooling, and abundant wind energy production. Montana, Nebraska, and South Dakota scored similarly well—dry states with renewable energy resources.

The Pacific Northwest, by contrast, ranked poorly. Its hydropower looks clean until you account for reservoir evaporation. A separate study from Purdue University reached the same conclusion, finding that Google has already concentrated its data centers in low water stress regions.

Yet the geography of data center investment tells a different story. Texas already hosts over 400 data centers. Nebraska, South Dakota, and Montana combined have just 70, out of more than 4,200 nationwide. Policy barriers, infrastructure gaps, and existing industry clusters in other states have kept companies building where they've always built.

You believes the math is compelling enough to shift that pattern. If these optimal states invest in attracting data centers and removing regulatory friction, the environmental payoff could be substantial—measured not in billions of gallons, but in the difference between sustainable growth and unsustainable sprawl.