What individual data centers are known to use
Only figures with a published source · as of 2026-08-26
- This table carries 9 facility or fleet water figures that can be traced to a published source. 1 of them came from a regulator; the rest are company self-reporting.
- No U.S. rule requires a data center to publish its water use, so a facility missing from this table is usually a facility that has never said, not one that uses no water.
Figures below are stated as their sources state them, and they are not comparable with each other: some are withdrawals, some are consumption, some are permitted maximums, some are estimates, and they cover different years. Read the basis column before quoting a row.
| Company | Place | Figure | Water source | Basis | Notes / source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft | Goodyear, Arizona | about 56 million gallons per year | potable | company-sourced estimate of potable water use | Reported as equivalent to 670 Goodyear households, or 1.9 percent of the town's population. APM Research Lab |
| Project Blue (Bobcat Tucson Water LLC) | Pima County, Arizona | 96.50 acre-feet per year of approved groundwater rights | groundwater | state regulator: ADWR well approval | Reporting put potential use at up to 31 million gallons per year; officials estimated 15,000 to 20,000 gallons per day in practice. Annual reporting to ADWR is required. AZPM |
| 15 U.S. data centers (2021) | about 4.2 billion gallons withdrawn, over 3.3 billion gallons consumed | not stated | company sustainability reporting | Per-facility figures ranged from 100,000 gallons a year to over 845 million gallons. Consumption reported as equivalent to 35,486 U.S. households. APM Research Lab | |
| Meta | Global fleet (2021) | 1.3 billion gallons withdrawn, over 635 million gallons consumed | not stated | company sustainability reporting | 367 million gallons of the withdrawal came from areas of high or extremely high water stress. Meta does not break out its Arizona facility. APM Research Lab |
| TSMC | North Phoenix, Arizona | about 10,000 homes' worth of water per fabrication plant | potable, recycled on site | reported company statement | Semiconductor fabrication rather than a data center, but it competes for the same Phoenix-area supply. The company plans reclamation plants to recycle 90 percent of cooling water. Grist |
| Microsoft (closed-loop design) | Phoenix, Arizona and Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin | zero evaporative water for cooling | closed loop, filled once | company design announcement | Piloted 2026, online from late 2027. Microsoft states the design avoids over 125 million liters a year per datacenter and that it raises PUE, meaning it trades site water for electricity. Microsoft Cloud Blog |
| Microsoft | Quincy, Washington | 74% recycled, reused or non-potable | recycled / non-potable | company reporting | Reported alongside Singapore at 99% and San Antonio at 79%. Microsoft's average WUE fell from 2.3 L/kWh in the early 2000s to 0.27 L/kWh in 2025. Microsoft, official blog |
| Amazon Web Services | 24 data centers globally, expanding to 120+ U.S. sites by 2030 | over 530 million gallons of drinking water preserved (expected, by 2030) | recycled / reclaimed | company reporting | AWS reports a global WUE of 0.12 L/kWh of IT load in 2025 and says it air-cools most of the year, using water only on the hottest days. Amazon Sustainability |
| Douglas County, Georgia | treated wastewater reused for cooling | reclaimed wastewater | company reporting | Google says it chooses air cooling or recycled water where a local water source is at high risk, and reports replenishing over 7 billion gallons in 2025. Google, water stewardship commitments |
Potable, reclaimed or none of the above
The source column matters as much as the figure. Water drawn from a municipal potable system competes directly with households; treated effluent bought from a wastewater utility largely does not, and a sealed closed loop draws almost nothing after it is filled. Operators have moved toward the second and third, and the volume column alone will not show you that. Nor will it show you the catch: a design that avoids water on site generally spends more electricity, and that electricity carries its own water at the power plant. Where that trade breaks even →
Withdrawal is not consumption
Withdrawal is the water a facility takes in. Consumption is the part that does not come back, mostly what evaporates in a cooling tower. A site can withdraw billions of gallons and return most of it, or consume nearly everything it takes. Reports that mix the two produce most of the wildly different numbers in circulation, which is why this table names which one each figure is.