With some communities pushing back against proposed data centers over concerns tied to water use, data center developers and others are working to tap technologies that will help to minimize the use of water to cool data center facilities.
A medium-sized data center can consume up to roughly 110 million gallons of water per year for cooling purposes, equivalent to the annual water usage of approximately 1,000 households, the Environmental and Energy Institute noted in June.
A report from Data Center Watch said that $64 billion in U.S. data center projects “have been blocked or delayed by a growing wave of local, bipartisan opposition.” The research timeline was May 2024-March 2025.
Data Center Watch tracks grassroots opposition to data center development across the United States.
Opposition to data center construction is largely motivated by local concerns, Data Center Watch said. “While the exact reasons opponents cite vary from location to location, some common themes are higher utility bills, water consumption, noise, impact on property value, and green space preservation,” it reported.
“As concerns about climate impacts magnify worries about the adequacy of water resources, most leading data center companies have made sustainability commitments for both power and water,” consulting firm Black and Veatch said in September.
“Many have ‘zero-carbon’ and ‘zero-water’ pledges they are aggressively working towards with ecosystem partners. The data center surge is opening up dialogue about the industry’s environmental footprint, leading to many significant cooling innovations in technology and water efficiency in the United States, the global leader in data center sites,” Black and Veatch said.
“Addressing the water demands of AI and data centers needs to move beyond ad-hoc, site-specific concerns or clickbait-y headlines around the use of ChatGPT,” argues Joseph Kane, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, in a November 2025 commentary posted on the think tank’s website.
“These technological and economic shocks are coinciding with an enormous number and variety of prevailing water infrastructure concerns across the country. Together, these challenges require more comprehensive planning and action among a cross-section of actors: tech firms, economic development organizations, and water systems, among others,” he writes.
As the Data Center Watch report noted, one of the reasons some communities are voicing opposition to data centers relates to water use.
State-Level Legislation Requires Reporting on Water Use
State lawmakers are proposing legislation related to data center water use.
In September, the California State Legislature approved Assembly Bill 93, authored by Assemblymember Diane Papan, requiring data centers to disclose and certify their water consumption as part of the local business licensing process. Assembly Bill 93 ensures that local governments and water suppliers have the information necessary to plan responsibly for new or expanding data centers, Papan’s office said.
The bill requires data centers to report expected water use to their supplier prior to applying for a business license; certify that the facility disclosed its projected water use at the time of business license application; and certify actual annual water use at the time of business license renewal.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom in October vetoed the bill. In his veto message, Newsom wrote: “The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence technologies is driving an unprecedented demand for data center capacity throughout the nation. As the global epicenter of the technology sector, California is well positioned to support the development of this critically important digital infrastructure in the state.”
In New Jersey, legislation passed this year in both chambers called for owners or operators of data centers to submit water and energy usage reports to state utility regulators.
In late October, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy conditionally vetoed the legislation. In his veto message, Murphy noted that earlier this year, he signed into law P.L.2025, c.98, which directs BPU to study the impacts of data centers on electricity costs in New Jersey.
“I believe that law presents a suitable framework for the energy and water usage metrics that this bill seeks to gather. Given that P.L.2025, c.98 initiates a study about the energy impacts of data centers, amending that existing law to incorporate the specific aspects of energy and water usage in this bill is a natural fit. Therefore, I am recommending revisions to BPU’s study and reporting requirements under P.L.2025, c.98 to include the same data sought to be collected in this bill as passed,” he wrote.
In Wisconsin, State Sen. Habush Sinykin and Rep. Angela Stroud introduced legislation tied to data centers that, among other things, would require quarterly electricity and water usage reports and proposals.
In Utah, the Legislature’s Legislative Water Development Commission on Nov. 20 voted to advance a legislative proposal related to water use and data centers. The proposal is sponsored by State Rep. Jill Koford.
In December, Michigan state lawmakers introduced a series of bills tied to data centers. Included among the bills are:
• Senate Bill 761, which would prohibit users who withdraw over an average of 2,000,000 gallons of water per day for consumptive use from obtaining a water withdrawal permit in our state. By “consumptive use,” the bill refers to water that is “lost,” through evaporation or otherwise, and is not returned to the water system.
• Senate Bill 762 would establish transparency standards by requiring the Michigan Public Service Commission to publish annual reports regarding the total energy expenditures and water usage of data centers.
The legislation has been referred to the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment for consideration.
Technologies Address Water Use
Data center developers are working to mitigate water use issues.
For example, a number of recently announced projects include the use of closed loop technology.
Deep Green on Nov. 5 announced plans to build a first-of-its-kind 24-megawatt, ultra-efficient data center in downtown Lansing, Mich.
The company will partner with Michigan public power utility Lansing Board of Water & Light to supply free, carbon-neutral heat directly into BWL’s hot water system, cutting carbon emissions and creating lasting community benefits, Deep Green said.
The facility will have a negligible impact on water use thanks to a closed-loop cooling system with hyper-efficient performance and near-silent operation, Deep Green said.
In October, Meta announced that it was breaking ground on a new, cutting-edge AI-focused data center that can scale to a 1GW data center site located in El Paso, Texas.
Meta said it plans to use a closed-loop, liquid cooled system in this data center that will use zero water for a majority of the year.
“We’ve also set an ambitious goal for ourselves – we aim to be water positive in 2030, meaning we’ll restore more water than we consume. And in El Paso, will restore 200% of the water consumed by our El Paso Data Center to local watersheds,” it said.
To meet this goal, Meta has partnered with local organizations to support water restoration projects that benefit the local community. In collaboration with DigDeep, we’ll help provide running water to El Paso communities in need. We’ll also collaborate with Texas Water Action Collaborative on water restoration projects in the El Paso community.
For its part, Amazon in December said it is taking multiple steps to make its data centers operate more efficiently, including implementing its custom designed In-Row Heat Exchanger (IRHX) -- a closed-loop liquid cooling system that is 20% more power efficient than off-the-shelf solutions while using 9% less water than fully air-cooled sites.
University Researchers Tackle Data Center Cooling
Meanwhile, researchers at U.S. universities are tackling the issue of how to cool data centers.
Students at the University of Texas at Arlington developed a passive cooling system designed for next-generation data centers.
Mechanical engineering seniors Jachin Ramirez, Freddy Hernandez, Nishi Patel, Anubhav Pradhan, Angel Diaz and Derick Tran won a Nasser Grayeli Best Poster Award at the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ 2025 InterPACK Conference in Anaheim, California, an international gathering of researchers and industry experts in electronics packaging and heterogenous integration.
The team’s project received partial funding through a U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E COOLERCHIPS grant led by Professor Dereje Agonafer—in collaboration with other universities—to advance the “Holistic Co-Design of Novel Hybrid Cooling Technology for the Data Center of the Future.”
Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed a new cooling technology that could significantly improve the energy efficiency of data centers and high-powered electronics, the university noted in June 2025.
“The technology features a specially engineered fiber membrane that passively removes heat through evaporation. It offers a promising alternative to traditional cooling systems like fans, heat sinks and liquid pumps. It could also reduce the water use associated with many current cooling systems,” the university said.
The advance is detailed in a paper published on June 13 in the journal Joule.
The new evaporative cooling technology uses a low-cost fiber membrane with a network of tiny, interconnected pores that draw cooling liquid across its surface using capillary action. As the liquid evaporates, it efficiently removes heat from the electronics underneath -- no extra energy required. The membrane sits on top of microchannels above the electronics, pulling in liquid that flows through the channels and efficiently dissipating heat, the university noted.
Reservoir Thermal Energy Storage
Researchers in the energy storage and computational science groups in the National Laboratory of the Rockies have demonstrated a system to cool data centers more efficiently and cost-effectively. The National Laboratory of the Rockies was formerly known as the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
The approach, called reservoir thermal energy storage (RTES), stores cold energy underground then uses it to cool facilities during peak-demand periods.
RTES takes advantage of cold outdoor air and low-cost electricity before storing energy. Whenever temperatures drop -- whether during colder seasons or at night -- the system uses equipment, such as dry coolers or chillers, to chill water before injecting it underground. In hotter weather, typically during summer, that stored cold water is pumped back up on demand and run through a heat exchanger, where it provides direct cooling by absorbing heat from a data center’s warm water return.
This warmed water is then sent back underground into a different, designated “hot well.” It is not cooled immediately but instead stays warm until the next recharge cycle, when cold outdoor air and off-peak electricity are again available to replenish the reservoir’s cold capacity. This ongoing cycle keeps the system in balance and ensures reliable cooling, while keeping energy costs low and taking stress off the grid.
