AI data centers are saving water on-site and spending it at the power plant

New AI data center cooling tech cuts on-site water use but raises electricity demand, shifting water consumption to power plants.

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--> Photo: panumas nikhomkhai / Pexels New cooling systems cut local water use, but the extra electricity they require pushes consumption upstream to thermal power generation this.removeAttribute('data-copied'), 2000);" class="w-7 h-7 border border-foreground/30 text-foreground rounded-full flex items-center justify-center hover:bg-muted transition-colors" aria-label="Copy link" > Add us on Google by Diego Almada Lopez Oct.

12, 2026 As Bloomberg reports, the newer cooling technologies spreading through AI facilities save water at the site itself.

They also raise total water use once you count the power plants keeping those facilities running.

Data centers have traditionally relied on evaporative cooling.

Water absorbs heat from the equipment, then evaporates into the air, taking that heat with it.

The newer approaches include closed-loop liquid cooling and immersion cooling.

Closed-loop systems circulate the same fluid repeatedly instead of evaporating it away.

Immersion cooling goes further, submerging hardware directly in a cooling liquid.

Both can reduce or completely eliminate on-site water use for evaporation.

Liquid and closed-loop systems may increase electricity demand by 6-35% during peak conditions compared with evaporative cooling.

More power means more generation, and many thermal power plants use substantial water for their own cooling.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that US data centers directly consumed about 17.5 billion gallons of water in 2023.

Indirect consumption tied to producing the electricity those data centers use was approximately 12 times higher than the direct cooling figure.

Older data center facilities typically ran server racks at 6-10 kW.

Looking ahead, total water footprints could grow significantly by 2030 under AI expansion scenarios.