Google is expanding its water management commitments, including investing in replenishment projects, to provide more water than it consumes in its data centers by 2030. The company now has 165 water management projects in 97 watersheds, which are expected to replenish 19 billion gallons per year by 2030. Google says this is more than double its consumption for 2024 and would allow the company to use more water in coming years while still meeting its goal.
Based on general sentiment online, such as Erin Brockovich’s recent collaborative AI data center map, people living near these data centers are primarily concerned about how the facilities could affect their water supply. An average-sized data center uses about 300,000 gallons of water per day, which is equivalent to what 1,000 homes in the United States use. Google runs data centers for search, YouTube, Drive cloud storage, Gmail and other services. And yes, its data centers also power its growing number of AI features and tools. The company, like many others, uses water to cool servers because it uses less energy than air cooling.
In its announcement, Google claims that data centers in the United States collectively use 1% of the water Americans use on their lawns each year. However, people are unhappy that AI data centers located near their communities use water because they believe AI is not needed in the first place.
For this particular expansion, it is spending $17 million to support new projects in Georgia, where it will help improve wetlands in the Flint River Wildlife Management Area, and in Iowa, where it will help local farmers convert 5,000 acres into perennial hay and pasture systems. He also supports projects using native plants to treat stormwater and mitigate flooding in Michigan, which will establish a 1-mile corridor along the Zumbro River in Minnesota to improve water quality, and restore 98 acres adjacent to the Blue River as a wetland in Missouri. It will also support water infrastructure projects in Nebraska and Texas.
In addition to investing in replenishment projects, Google is investing $500 million in updating public water, wastewater and water reuse infrastructure. It also committed to using air cooling if its assessment finds a location’s water source is high risk, as well as pursuing reclamation solutions, such as using treated sewer wastewater. In February, for example, Google announced it was building data centers in Texas that instead use “advanced air cooling technology” to limit water consumption.
