Hum

Water

Do data centres use drinking water?

The claim: “Data centres use drinking water.”

PARTLY Hum’s verdictcompany figures

Partly, and mostly yes where it’s published. Google’s report says its data centres withdrew 9,866 million US gallons (about 37 billion litres) in 2024. Of that, 7,699 million gallons was potable, meaning drinking-quality: about 78%. About 9% was reclaimed wastewater and 13% other non-potable water (Hum’s arithmetic). Sites differ: in Douglas County, Georgia, almost all of it was reclaimed. Amazon says 26 of its facilities run on 100% reclaimed water but publishes no overall share. These are the companies’ own figures.

The bigger pictureAcross the US, data centres consumed about 17 billion gallons of water on site in a recent year (a Berkeley Lab estimate). Nobody publishes how much of that was drinking water.

Where Google’s data centres got their water, 2024
  • 29.14 billion Potable (drinking-quality): Google’s table, converted from 7,699 million gallons (company figure)
  • 4.879 billion Other non-potable water: Google’s table, converted from 1,289 million gallons (company figure)
  • 3.319 billion Reclaimed wastewater: Google’s table, converted from 877 million gallons (company figure)

Hollow dots are the companies’ own figures. Unit: billion litres withdrawn.

Why the claim misleads

True for most of Google’s water, but not for every site: some run mostly on reclaimed wastewater, and most companies don’t publish the split.

What nobody knows yet
  • Amazon, Microsoft and Meta don’t publish what share of their data-centre water is drinking-quality.
  • No independent figure says how much of all data centres’ water is drinking water.
  • Google’s split is for water withdrawn. It doesn’t say how much of the potable water was later returned as discharge.
Sources (5)

Hum’s sums

  • 9,866 million US gallons × 3.785 litres a gallon ≈ 37 billion litres
  • 7,699 million US gallons × 3.785 litres a gallon ≈ 29 billion litres
  • 1,289 million US gallons × 3.785 litres a gallon ≈ 4.9 billion litres
  • 877 million US gallons × 3.785 litres a gallon ≈ 3.3 billion litres
  • 7,699 ÷ 9,866 million gallons ≈ 78% potable
  • 877 ÷ 9,866 million gallons ≈ 9% reclaimed wastewater
  • 1,289 ÷ 9,866 million gallons ≈ 13% other non-potable water
Cite this

Google 2025 Environmental Report (data-centre water table, data for 2024; limited assurance by Ernst & Young), as quoted in Hum, “Do data centres use drinking water?”, https://humearth.org/q/drinking-water (quote checked 25 Oct 2026).

Cite the original source first; Hum is where you found it.

What do Wh, kWh and TWh mean?

Wh is a watt-hour: a 1-watt light left on for an hour. 1 kWh = 1,000 Wh, and 1 TWh = 1 billion kWh. Hum compares each number with something everyday so you don’t need the units.

Send this answer

Google’s data centres drew about 29 billion litres of potable, drinking-quality water in 2024, about 78% of their total, by Google’s own report. Some sites run on reclaimed wastewater.

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