California lawmakers hope a new bill will make the massive water use of data centers more transparent, ensuring that nearby communities can plan accordingly for this consumption.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, state legislators passed a bill last month that would require data centers to report their projected water use before they open and to certify each year how much water they actually use. The bill awaits Gov. Gavin Newsom's signature before becoming law.
As artificial intelligence becomes more prominent, so too do the data centers that power it. Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are building such facilities across the globe, including many in California.
But these buildings come with a huge environmental cost. In Ireland, for example, data centers accounted for more than 20% of the country's electricity use in 2023 and more than all of the country's urban homes.
It's not just electricity that these facilities use — but also water. The servers that power these centers can become quite hot, and companies often use water (or other liquids) to circulate through the servers to cool them down. Many data centers actually have industrial cooling towers that evaporate water and help cool the buildings.
Even a mid-sized data center can use up to 300,000 gallons of water each day, and as warming global temperatures lead to water scarcity in certain parts of the world, these data centers can put a strain on this vital resource.
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That's why California's bill is an important step. By requiring data centers to be more transparent about their water use, communities can properly plan, ensuring that there is enough water to go around.
"It's very important that localities be able to plan for what's next, whether that's building more housing or building data centers," bill author and assemblymember Diane Papan told the Times. "And data centers happen to be incredibly thirsty."
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