California’s Thirsty Data Centers

Data centers use vast amounts of water primarily for evaporative cooling, spraying it into the air or over coils to cool hot air generated by servers in order to keep the equipment from failing. The largest data centers can consume between 1 and 5 million gallons of water daily, with consumption rising during the summer.

There are currently 286 data centers in California, and more are on the way. A very large new data center is targeted to be built by 2028 in Imperial, a small city 115 miles east of San Diego. The 950,000-square-foot center could be the largest operating statewide, taking up 17 football fields’ worth of land.