Is AI worth your water and air?

According to IBM’s “What is Artificial Intelligence” article, Artificial intelligence (AI) is “technology that enables computers and machines to simulate human learning, comprehension, problem solving, decision making, creativity and autonomy.” 

The authors clarify this definition to explain that AI’s functions range from understanding and responding to human language — such as in large language models like Siri and ChatGPT — to acting independently, “replacing the need for human intelligence or interference,” such as in self-driving cars.  

AI can be a helpful tool to humans, but in turn, poses major threats to our environments.

To train and power large generative AI models such as GPT-4, large warehouse-sized data centers are built to contain and power servers. According to Rebecca Lepper at the Pew Research Center, an average U.S. data center houses 2,000 to 5,000 servers; larger facilities house even more. 

A lot of money and energy goes into building, powering and running these data centers, which ends up putting a huge strain on the environment and the communities they’re built in. 

Natural Language Processing (NLP) training makes it possible for AI models to interpret, understand and generate human language. This tool is vital to many AI softwares, but requires extraordinary amounts of energy to train and operate for weeks, and even months, at a time. 

A study done at UMass Amherst found that running an NLP pipeline — a framework that converts raw text into language a computer can understand — emits 78,486 lbs of CO2, more than the average American does in a year. The same study also found that large transformers used at these centers emit 626,155 lbs of carbon dioxide. That is nearly five times the amount a car emits, on average, over their entire lifetime.       

Training and operating AI software on servers also takes a huge toll on the environment. Billions of liters of freshwater is used to cool servers and provide data centers with electricity. According to a study on AI’s water usage, data centers use water in three different ways. Every scope causes strain on the environment and local communities.

Scope-1, focuses on concerns about on-site water usage, primarily water used for cooling. Servers are cooled by diverting heat into the facility, which then must also be cooled. To do this, many data centers use cooling towers. 

Cooling towers put freshwater in a cycle to absorb heat from the facility and then evaporate, taking heat away from the cooling tower and into the environment, while the water that isn’t used is discharged after a few cycles. Nearly 80% of water withdrawn by data centers is evaporated. 

The average data center consumes about one to nine liters of freshwater for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) of energy used. By using “blue water” found in lakes and rivers, data centers take it away from and put a strain on local communities, limiting freshwater even further, and unevenly distributing it.  

In “Data Centers and Water Consumption” for the EESI, Miguel Yañez-Barnuevo explains that medium-sized data centers could consume around 110 million gallons of water per year. A larger data center could consume 5 million gallons a day. That’s around 1.8 billion gallons annually, and equal to the annual water consumption of a town with 10,000-50,000 people. 

Scope-2 includes water used off-site.  According to Yañez-Barnuevo, 56% of data center’s electricity comes from fossil fuels like coal and/or natural gases. These plants have to be cooled in a very similar way to the data centers themselves. In 2022, 48.5 trillion gallons of water, 40% of the national total, was withdrawn by coal or natural gas plants in the U.S; 962 billion gallons of that water was consumed and no longer available for human use.  

According to a study done on AI’s water usage, the global consumption of scope-1 and scope-2, water withdrawal for AI usage could reach 4.2 to 6.6 billion cubic meters, more than half of the United Kingdom’s annual withdrawal (as of 2020), in 2027. 

Coal and natural gas plants play yet another role in data center’s harm to communities.

When data centers are built, they need to be connected to the grid to access the huge amount of energy needed to operate. In order to do this, utility companies have to invest in new infrastructure such as power plants, transmission lines and transformers. To pay for this investment, everyone in the communities where data centers have been built, electricity bills have increased to support the data centers. 

Yañez-Barneuvo explains in another article for the EESI that average electricity costs in the U.S. in 2019 were $0.13 per kWh. In 2025, prices increased by about 27%, averaging at $0.19 per kWh. In places with more data centers, such as Virginia, prices have increased by up to 267% in the last five years.

Due to the high demand for electricity created by the high demand for AI, coal plants are being forced to stay open past their 40-year lifespan, and construction of new natural gas plants are being delayed and continuously growing in price. 

According to Yañez-Barneuvo, it can cost up to $1.3 billion to refurbish a coal plant, and running these plants has become 28% more expensive from 2021 to 2024. Building a natural gas plant has also become more expensive, with prices tripling since 2022. Plants that are planned to come into service in 2030 are reporting costs of $2,000 for every kWh generated. 

These costs will  again be displaced onto customers in the form of higher bills. 

To continue, the machinery used in data centers have been reported to create a continuous droning sound that can be heard for hundreds of feet around it. Community members have complained of the sound’s constancy, and the real effects it's been having on their life. Yañez-Barneuvo explains that the sound can cause headaches, vertigo, nausea and sleep disturbances, among other ailments. 

All hope may seem lost, but there are alternative ways to power and operate data centers more cleanly. Yañez-Barneuvo explains that free-cooling, air cooling, immersion-cooling or using a closed-loop cooling system and/or clean energy could significantly impact data center’s water usage. 

Although AI can be a helpful tool, we shouldn’t sacrifice the well-being of ourselves and our planet to accommodate it.

The opinions desk can be reached at opinions@ubspectrum.com