Texas Data Centers May Use 25 Billion Gallons of Water This Year, and State Planners Cannot Yet Count Them

Texas is building data centers faster than almost any other state, and the water they need is becoming a planning issue. The Houston Advanced Research Center, an independent nonprofit research organization, estimates that existing data centers in Texas will consume about 25 billion gallons of water in 2025, or 0.4% of the state's total water use, according to reporting by The Texas Tribune. By 2030, HARC estimates, that share could rise to as much as 2.7% of annual water use in Texas, equivalent to the consumption of 1.3 million average US households.

The state has more than 400 data center facilities, with about 70 more on the way, according to the Tribune. Air cooling avoids direct water use but can account for up to 40% of a data center's total energy demand, according to a University of Texas at Arlington engineering professor quoted by the Tribune. The Stargate campus outside Abilene, a collaboration between OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle, is using a closed-loop cooling system. Closed-loop systems substantially reduce ongoing water consumption compared with evaporative cooling, but they rely more on electricity to reject heat, particularly on hot days.

The Texas Water Development Board's long-term planning relies on historical water use data. The board has said it is working to move data centers into a separate category of water user to track them better. At 0.4% of state water use, data centers are a small user in aggregate. A Purdue University researcher quoted by the Tribune noted that the same volume of water use carries a different environmental burden in Texas than in a wetter state like Iowa.

California lawmakers passed a bill in September requiring new data centers to report projected water use before starting operations; it awaits the governor's decision. The Texas market had about 10,234 MW of data center demand, according to the research firm Baxtel, cited by the Tribune. For energy markets, the water question shapes where data centers are built and what cooling technology they use, which in turn affects their electricity demand.