A data center needs a dependable electricity supply large enough for its servers, storage, networking, cooling, pumps, controls, lighting, and power-conversion equipment. It must continuously move the heat produced by that equipment out of the building, using air, chilled water, evaporative systems, direct liquid cooling, or a combination. Water demand depends on that cooling design, local climate and water quality, workload efficiency, utilization, and the water consumed upstream to generate electricity. There is therefore no single electricity or water figure that applies to every facility.
For a useful comparison, evaluate the whole system: reliable power capacity, heat load and cooling redundancy, onsite and indirect water impacts, climate, operating conditions, and performance metrics such as PUE and WUE. National projections can show scale, but they cannot substitute for a site-specific engineering and utility study.
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What electricity does a data center need?
Electricity enters a facility through a utility connection or onsite generation and is distributed through transformers, switchgear, uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs), batteries, generators, power distribution units, and branch circuits. The first call on that electricity is the IT load: servers, storage, networking, and associated electronics. The remainder runs the infrastructure that keeps the IT load within safe operating limits.
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Fans, pumps, chillers, cooling towers, air handlers, controls, lighting, security systems, and power-conversion losses all add to the meter reading. This is why a facility’s total energy is higher than the energy measured at its IT equipment. A design must size the electrical service for the expected IT demand plus this overhead, with capacity and redundancy for maintenance, failures, and planned growth.
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The U.S. Department of Energy’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) defines power usage effectiveness (PUE) as total annual facility energy divided by annual IT-equipment energy. A PUE of 1.20 means that each 1 kWh used by IT requires another 0.20 kWh for facility systems; it is not a statement about how much electricity the computing workload itself consumes. PUE is explained in FEMP’s metric guidance at DOE FEMP’s cooling-water efficiency guidance.
What national projections mean
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s United States Data Center Energy Usage Report: 2025 Update, published in June 2026, models U.S. electricity use from equipment shipments, device energy, cooling simulations, facility types, and locations. Its figures are scenarios rather than a guaranteed forecast:
| 2026 LBNL model result | Value | How to interpret it |
|---|---|---|
| Reference-case U.S. data-center electricity in 2030 | 649 TWh | Central modeled scenario, not a site allocation |
| Compounded-uncertainty range for 2030 | 521–843 TWh | Model bounds reflecting uncertain assumptions |
| Share of total U.S. electricity in 2030 | 11.8% | Central estimate; sensitivity cases are 9.5–15.3% |
See the LBNL report landing page or its DOE/LBNL PDF for the assumptions and scenarios. None of these national values tells an individual project how many megawatts its utility must provide.
Recent efficiency context
LBNL estimates that average national PUE improved from 1.55 in 2018 to 1.45 in 2024, while infrastructure’s share of data-center electricity fell from 36% to 31%. For facilities serving AI equipment, it estimates an average PUE of 1.145 in 2024 and 1.136 in 2030. Those are modeled averages for defined groups, not universal requirements or mandatory targets; a particular building can be higher or lower because of climate, cooling architecture, redundancy, utilization, and operating practice.
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How cooling removes the heat
Nearly all electrical energy delivered to IT equipment ultimately becomes heat. Cooling is a continuous heat-removal chain: capture heat at the server, transport it through air or liquid, reject it outdoors, and keep temperature, humidity, and airflow inside equipment limits. The appropriate design depends on rack density, climate, water availability, maintenance strategy, and the reliability level required.
Air-cooled systems
In a conventional air system, server fans move warm air from equipment to a return path. Computer-room air handlers or similar units cool and condition the air, then supply it back to the cold side of the racks. Hot-aisle and cold-aisle separation prevents supply air from mixing with exhaust air. Containment, accurate airflow control, and avoiding bypass air can reduce fan and chiller work without changing the servers.
Temperature and humidity set points should follow the allowable range of the installed IT equipment rather than an unnecessarily narrow comfort setting. FEMP also describes air-side economizing: when outdoor conditions are suitable, outside air can provide cooling with little or no mechanical refrigeration. Filtration, outdoor-air quality, humidity, and local weather determine whether that mode is practical.
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A common water-based arrangement has several loops. Room air transfers heat to chilled water in a cooling coil. A chiller moves that heat to condenser water, and a cooling tower rejects heat outdoors, primarily through evaporation. The tower therefore needs makeup water, while concentrated minerals and treatment chemicals leave in a blowdown stream. Pumps, fans, chillers, and controls consume electricity even when the tower is operating efficiently.
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Water-side economizing uses a heat exchanger to bypass or reduce chiller operation when outdoor conditions allow the tower or another heat-rejection device to provide chilled-water temperatures. FEMP’s Best Practices Guide for Energy-Efficient Data Center Design (July 26, 2024) emphasizes that no design guide can identify one most-efficient design for every scenario; the benefit of economizing is site-dependent.
Direct liquid cooling
Direct liquid cooling places a recirculating liquid loop close to heat-producing components, often through cold plates or immersion equipment. A coolant distribution unit (CDU) transfers heat from the IT loop to a facility loop. That facility loop may still connect to a chiller and cooling tower, so “liquid cooling” does not automatically mean zero water use. It can reduce airflow and support high rack heat densities, but the design must address pumps, leak detection, fluid compatibility, maintenance access, and the final heat-rejection method.
Redundancy and operating conditions
Cooling capacity is not just a nameplate number. Engineers model the highest expected IT heat load, outdoor design conditions, partial-load efficiency, equipment failure, maintenance outages, and restart behavior. They then select redundancy, such as spare chillers, pumps, cooling-tower cells, or independent loops, consistent with the required availability. A site that has enough peak tons on paper can still overheat if a failed component leaves no flow path or if airflow is poorly balanced.
Where water enters the picture
Water can be consumed onsite for cooling-tower evaporation, blowdown, humidification, treatment, and occasional cleaning. It is also consumed indirectly at power plants that generate the electricity used by the facility. A dry or closed-loop system can reduce onsite withdrawals while increasing electricity use in some climates; an evaporative system can lower electrical demand while consuming more local water. The meaningful boundary must therefore be stated before two designs are compared.
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Why there is no universal gallons-per-data-center number
A 2025 review by LBNL researchers Nuoa Lei, Jun Lu, Arman Shehabi, and Eric R. Masanet found workload-level water use varied by more than 10,000-fold across the cases analyzed. That range reflects different cases and should not be read as a claim that every facility or workload spans the entire range. The review identifies server efficiency, grid water-consumption factors, utilization, cooling type, infrastructure efficiency, climate, inactive-server share, and equipment refresh cycle as major determinants. Its conclusion is that there is no single recipe for minimizing water use; the best combination is tailored to site constraints. The review is summarized at LBNL’s water-use publication page.
Cooling-tower controls
Cooling towers recirculate water, but evaporation leaves dissolved minerals behind. Operators discharge a controlled blowdown stream and add makeup water to keep chemistry within limits. FEMP reports that increasing cycles of concentration from three to six can reduce makeup-water requirements by 20% and blowdown by 50%, according to its January 9, 2019 guidance on cooling-water efficiency opportunities. The change is not automatic: water chemistry, corrosion, scaling, biological control, treatment capability, and discharge rules determine the safe operating limit.
Reuse and alternative sources
Projects can investigate treated reclaimed water, rainwater where practical, or reverse-osmosis concentrate-management and reuse strategies. Each option requires a dependable source, suitable quality, storage, treatment, monitoring, and a permitted discharge route. A nominally plentiful source may be unusable if seasonal restrictions, salinity, contaminants, or drought rules prevent reliable makeup-water delivery.
How to measure performance without misleading comparisons
| Metric | Formula | What it reveals | What it omits |
|---|---|---|---|
| PUE | Total annual facility energy ÷ annual IT-equipment energy | Facility overhead relative to IT energy | Absolute workload energy, water use, and upstream generation impacts |
| WUE | Annual site water use in liters ÷ annual IT-equipment energy in kWh | Onsite water intensity of delivered IT energy | Most upstream water used to generate electricity; it is not a complete life-cycle water metric |
Definitions matter as much as the number. Before comparing facilities, confirm the boundary (building, campus, or utility system), reporting period, treatment of backup generators and shared infrastructure, workload mix, IT utilization, and whether water means withdrawal, consumption, or a narrower onsite measure. A low PUE can coexist with high water use, and a low onsite WUE can coincide with higher electricity demand and greater upstream water consumption. LBNL’s modeling work explains why both site and electricity-system effects need to be considered at its U.S. Data Center Energy & Water Modeling & Forecasting page.
How to compare a proposed site or retrofit
Use the following sequence before selecting a location, cooling plant, or equipment refresh:
- Define the IT workload. List server generations, accelerator content, storage and network equipment, expected utilization, rack power, growth schedule, and the portion of equipment that may be idle. Translate those assumptions into heat load by operating mode, not just a single nameplate value.
- Establish the electrical envelope. Ask the utility for available capacity, voltage and connection conditions, reliability history, fault-duty limits, and the requirements for planned expansion. Size for IT plus measured or modeled facility overhead, and document generator, UPS, battery, and fuel assumptions. No universal interconnection timeline or capacity rule applies to every location.
- Choose a heat-rejection path. Compare air cooling, chilled-water and tower systems, direct liquid cooling, dry coolers, and hybrid or economizer modes against rack density, outdoor design weather, noise, maintenance, and failure scenarios.
- Audit water availability and quality. Quantify tower makeup, blowdown, treatment, humidification, and discharge. Verify seasonal supply, drought restrictions, chemistry, reclaimed-water availability, storage, and permits with the local water authority.
- Model energy-water tradeoffs at one boundary. Calculate PUE and WUE for the same period and workload, then add the relevant water intensity of electricity generation. Show how results change in hot weather, low utilization, high utilization, and equipment-refresh cases.
- Plan operations and verification. Install submeters for IT, cooling, pumps, treatment, and water flows. Set alarms for temperature, humidity, differential pressure, leaks, conductivity, and abnormal blowdown. Recalculate performance after commissioning and after major IT or cooling changes.
Common design mistakes and fixes
Treating a national forecast as a site budget
U.S.-wide TWh and percentage estimates describe modeled scenarios. They do not establish a project’s feeder size, water allocation, permitting path, or schedule. Replace the shortcut with a load model, utility study, water-source assessment, and local authority review.
Assuming liquid cooling eliminates water
Liquid at the rack only describes the heat-transfer interface. If the CDU rejects heat through a chiller and evaporative tower, the facility can still consume substantial water. Trace the heat all the way to the outdoor sink and measure each loop.
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Reducing facility overhead is valuable, but PUE ignores the efficiency of the computing work and upstream water. A design that lowers PUE by choosing an evaporative system may increase local water demand. Report PUE, WUE, utilization, server efficiency, and the chosen system boundary together.
Running a tower at an arbitrary concentration
More cycles can save makeup water, but excessive concentration can cause scale, corrosion, or biological-control problems. Use water-quality testing and a treatment engineer to set the operating limit, then verify the stated 20% makeup and 50% blowdown reductions only under the conditions described by FEMP.
Ignoring part-load and failure conditions
Peak design values do not predict annual performance if equipment spends much of the year at low load, or if a failed pump forces inefficient operation. Simulate seasonal weather, partial load, maintenance, and the loss of the largest cooling or electrical component.
Questions to take to utilities, engineers, and authorities
- What continuous and interruptible electrical capacity is available now, and what upgrades are required for the forecast IT load plus overhead?
- Which reliability, protection, fuel-storage, noise, emissions, and generator-testing requirements apply at this location?
- What are the outdoor design temperatures, humidity limits, wildfire or air-quality constraints, and hours available for air- or water-side economizing?
- What rack heat density and coolant temperatures can the selected servers support, and what happens during a pump, chiller, tower, or CDU failure?
- What water source, quality, seasonal allocation, drought restriction, treatment standard, and discharge permit apply to makeup and blowdown?
- How will onsite water use and electricity-related water use be reported, and do the PUE and WUE boundaries match the comparison being made?
- Which meters, alarms, trend intervals, and commissioning tests will prove that the design performs as modeled?
The most defensible design is not the one with a universally “best” cooling technology. It is the one whose electrical reliability, heat-removal path, water source, operating controls, and measurement boundaries fit the workload and the place where it will run.
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