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The UN estimates that artificial intelligence (AI) could double the energy and water consumption of data centers by 2030, threatening the natural resources of billions of people as AI giants prepare to go public to finance their colossal investments.
The UN estimates that artificial intelligence (AI) could double the energy and water consumption of data centers by 2030, threatening the natural resources of billions of people as AI giants prepare to go public to finance their colossal investments.
The report from the UN Institute for Water, Environment and Health notes that the water and electricity consumption of data centers is expected to double by 2030, mainly due to the explosion in demand for artificial intelligence (AI).UN experts have thus examined the water required to produce the electricity that powers data centers and AI. In the United States, for example, each kWh requires 5 liters of water, and this number rises to 7 in France. But in Brazil, each kWh requires 29 liters, 21 liters in Switzerland or Sweden.According to the report, in 2025, data centers consumed 4.5 trillion liters of water, enough to meet the needs of more than 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa.
According to its authors, the consumption of fresh water attributable to AI and data centers could reach between 4.2 and 6.6 billion cubic meters per year by 2027.
By 2030, this figure could rise to 9 billion m3 of freshwater, equivalent to the annual needs of the 1.3 billion people living in sub-Saharan Africa.This need for water is not trivial. Data centers use evaporation to cool their servers: wet cooling towers draw in immense amounts of water which then dissipate into the atmosphere.
“Public debate still often considers AI as software, but AI also involves data centers, transmission networks, electricity production, and cooling systems,” said Kaveh Madani, Director of the institute and lead author of the report.
