More or Less How much water does AI consume?
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Mar 28, 2026 Alex de Vries-Gao, researcher estimating AI's electricity and water use, and Nathan Gower, the reporter who investigated the claims. They unpack misreported figures, explain the difference between water withdrawal and consumption, and trace how hardware, data centres and power plants drive water needs. They also discuss geographic hotspots and why location shapes environmental impact.
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Mislabeling Turned Withdrawal Into Consumption
- Karen Howe's 4–6 trillion litres claim mislabels withdrawal as consumption for 2027 AI water use.
- The correct consumption estimate from the cited paper is 380–600 billion litres, about 10% of the misquoted figure.
Faulty Electricity Baseline Undercut Water Estimates
- The academic paper's electricity baseline was itself flawed because it used Alex de Vries-Gao's estimate for servers produced in 2027, not cumulative AI server electricity in 2027.
- That undercount of electricity leads to underestimates of associated water use.
Independent Estimate Puts AI Water Use At 750B L/Year
- Alex de Vries-Gao estimated AI water consumption at the end of 2025 as about 750 billion litres per year.
- He derived this by estimating chip production, converting to servers, estimating utilization and translating power demand into water intensity.
