What Water-Related Concerns are Associated with Data Centers?

"Indirect Impact"

• Data centers also have a large indirect impact on water resources because electricity generation often requires water.
• Thermoelectric power plants, including fossil fuel and nuclear plants, commonly use water for cooling.
• Therefore, even air-cooled data centers may indirectly increase water consumption by increasing electricity demand (Siddik et al., 2021).
• Researchers identified that nearly half of U.S. data center servers are powered partly by plants located in water-stressed regions (Siddik et al., 2021).