Cloud Giants Improve Water Efficiency Despite Growing Data Center Footprints
- Data centers worldwide consumed 222 billion liters, or 59 billion gallons, of water for cooling in 2025, according to data from consultancy Rystad Energy.
- American chip giant Nvidia reported in June that its new DSX system for designing and managing artificial intelligence data centers can eliminate water consumption almost entirely at select...
- Major infrastructure providers including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Meta told Agence France-Presse that they also rely on closed-loop systems designed for zero net water loss.
Data centers worldwide consumed 222 billion liters, or 59 billion gallons, of water for cooling in 2025, according to data from consultancy Rystad Energy. As artificial intelligence workloads expand the physical footprints of cloud computing giants, the facilities are encountering a growing wall of public backlash in the United States over their immense resource consumption. Tech companies scaling up infrastructure are now deploying closed-loop liquid cooling methods to curb water usage, though industry experts note the approach creates a direct operational trade-off with electricity consumption.
Nvidia DSX Deployment and Closed-Loop Cooling Trade-Offs
American chip giant Nvidia reported in June that its new DSX system for designing and managing artificial intelligence data centers can eliminate water consumption almost entirely at select facilities. According to Josh Parker, Nvidia’s head of sustainability, the technology uses a closed-loop cooling system where liquid flows directly through servers, passing as close as possible to chips that can reach temperatures above 80 degrees Celsius, or 176 degrees Fahrenheit.
While standard closed-loop setups operated at about 32 degrees Celsius in 2024 according to the Uptime Institute, Nvidia routes liquid into servers at a warmer 45 degrees Celsius. This elevated baseline allows operators to rely primarily on simple fans to circulate air rather than running energy-intensive cooling systems year-round, though Josh Parker noted that chill airflow or water evaporation remains necessary during heat waves or in extreme climates.
Independent researcher Andy Masley points out a direct engineering conflict in these deployments. There’s a pretty direct trade-off between how much water is used and how much energy is used
for temperature control, Masley said. Cutting back on water typically demands more electrical power because the liquid sealed inside the pipes must still be cooled, frequently by blowing air over the infrastructure.
Cloud Provider Efficiency Metrics and Public Relations Pressures
Major infrastructure providers including Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Meta told Agence France-Presse that they also rely on closed-loop systems designed for zero net water loss. Sustainability reports from Microsoft and Amazon Web Services show that even as their overall water consumption increased between 2022 and 2025 to match expanding footprints, their water use efficiency improved by 25% and 37% respectively.
Reporting indicates that companies face uneven incentives when upgrading facilities. Shaolei Ren, an engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, notes that because water is generally cheaper than electricity, enterprises lack strong financial motivations to reduce water consumption on cost alone. There are incentives,
Ren said, but they have more to do with public relations amid the growing backlash to data centers across the United States.
Compounding the challenge, upgrading legacy data centers to modern cooling architecture remains expensive. Minh K. Le, who leads data center and hydrogen research at Rystad, suggests this obstacle carries limited weight for modern builds because older facilities are smaller, less powerful, and require less cooling overall. Beyond direct facility consumption, the water used to generate electricity and manufacture hardware can double the resource footprint of a data center in the United States.
