Google is expanding its water stewardship commitments, including investments in replenishment projects, to provide more water than it consumes at its data centers by 2030. The company now has 165 stewardship projects across 97 watersheds, which are expected to replenish 19 billion gallons a year by 2030. Google says that’s more than double its consumption for 2024 and would allow the company to use more water over the coming years and still achieve its goal.
Based on general online sentiment, such as Erin Brockovich’s recent crowdsourced AI data center map, people living near these data centers are mostly worried about how the facilities could affect their water supply. A mid-size data center uses around 300,000 gallons of water a day, which is equivalent to what 1,000 households use in the US. Google runs data centers for Search, YouTube, Drive cloud storage, Gmail and other services. And, yes, its data centers also power its increasing number of AI features and tools. The company, like many others, uses water to cool down servers, as it uses less energy than air cooling.
In its announcement, Google says data centers in the US collectively use one percent of the water that Americans use on their lawns annually. However, people are unhappy about AI data centers near their communities using water at all, as they feel AI is unnecessary in the first place.
For this expansion in particular, it’s spending $17 million to support new projects in Georgia, where it will help enhance the wetlands at 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. It’s also supporting projects that use native plants to treat stormwater and mitigate flooding in Michigan, that will establish a 1-mile corridor along the Zumbro River in Minnesota to improve water quality and will restore 98 acres adjacent to the Blue River as a wetland in Missouri. It will support water infrastructure projects in Nebraska and Texas, as well.
In addition to investing in replenishment projects, Google is making a $500 million investment into updating public water, wastewater and water reuse infrastructure. It also pledged to use air cooling if its assessment reveals that a location’s water source is at high risk, as well as to pursue reclaimed solutions, such as using treated wastewater from the sewers. In February, for instance, Google reported that it was building data centers in Texas that use “advanced air-cooling technology” instead to limit water consumption.
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