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Data centres use electricity to run servers, storage and networking equipment—and to keep that equipment reliably powered and cool. Their water use depends on cooling design and the electricity supply; their land needs depend on the site and supporting infrastructure. None of these demands is the same at every facility.
Why do data centres use so much electricity?
Servers and accelerators perform computing and storage; networking equipment moves data between machines and users. Power-conversion systems, cooling, backup equipment and other building infrastructure support those IT loads. Almost all the electricity used by the equipment ultimately becomes heat that must be removed to keep systems operating within safe conditions.
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The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that data centres consumed 415 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity worldwide in 2024, about 1.5% of global electricity use. Its base case projects about 945 TWh of global data-centre electricity consumption in 2030. That is a scenario, not a certainty: future demand depends on factors such as how much computing is deployed and how efficiently it is operated. IEA, “Energy demand from AI – Energy and AI” (2025)
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A separate IEA chapter describes the electricity generation serving data centres, rather than the centres’ electricity consumption. Keeping those measures distinct avoids treating a supply-side estimate as the same figure as demand.
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| IEA measure | 2024 | 2030 |
|---|---|---|
| Global data-centre electricity consumption | 415 TWh; estimate | About 945 TWh; base-case projection |
| Electricity generation serving data centres | 460 TWh | Over 1,000 TWh; projection |
The consumption figures are from the IEA’s energy-demand chapter; the generation figures are from its separate energy-supply chapter (both 2025). They describe different accounting measures and should not be combined into one forecast.
Why does cooling add to the electricity demand?
Cooling equipment moves heat out of server rooms, but it also draws power. The share varies substantially with facility design and efficiency: the IEA reports that cooling accounts for about 7% of electricity use in efficient hyperscale centres, compared with more than 30% in less-efficient enterprise centres. These figures illustrate why “data centre” is not a single uniform type of building. IEA, “Energy demand from AI – Energy and AI” (2025)
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Cooling demand also depends on local climate and operating conditions. A facility in a hot climate may face a different cooling burden from one in a cooler location, while the equipment and methods used to remove heat affect both power and water needs.
Why do some data centres use water?
Water can be consumed directly at a facility, particularly by evaporative cooling systems. There is also indirect water consumption: power plants may use water to generate the electricity a data centre consumes. Those two sources should be counted separately because a facility’s on-site water figure does not describe the full water impact of its electricity supply.
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There can be a trade-off between them. An air-cooled chiller may use no water at the facility but require more electricity than a water-cooled alternative. Whether that reduces total water consumption depends partly on the water intensity of the electricity grid. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report discusses these boundaries and includes U.S. estimates and projections; those national figures should not be read as a global total.
Water use also varies sharply by workload and operating context. A 2025 review by Nuoa Lei, Jun Lu, Arman Shehabi and Eric R. Masanet found workload-level water use varied by more than 10,000-fold across the conditions it assessed. The determinants included server efficiency and utilization, cooling-system type, facility efficiency, climate, water used in electricity generation, idle equipment and equipment refresh cycles. That range is not a universal multiplier for any particular facility; it shows why a single generic water-per-query or water-per-data-centre figure can mislead. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “The water use of data center workloads: A review and assessment of key determinants” (June 2025)
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Why do data centres need land, and why are they built in particular places?
They need a physical site for buildings, servers, cooling equipment and related systems. They also need suitable access to electricity and supporting infrastructure. Siting is shaped by practical constraints: data services can have geographic or latency requirements, and facilities generally need firm, reliable power. A large or rapidly growing load can therefore affect a particular region’s grid more visibly than its share of global electricity use might suggest.
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There is no consistent global land-footprint total established by the sources cited here. A land figure also depends on what is counted: the building parcel, the wider campus, substations and transmission, electricity-generation sites, or an even broader supply chain. Without a defined boundary, a universal land-per-data-centre number would not be meaningful.
How should resource figures be compared?
Before comparing two facilities or estimates, check that they use the same boundaries and context. A headline number can change depending on whether it counts IT equipment alone or the whole facility, site water or source water, and the centre itself or associated energy infrastructure.
Quick Recap
- Compare the same geography, year and workload.
- Distinguish electricity consumed at the data centre from electricity generation serving its load.
- Separate IT electricity from cooling and other facility overhead.
- Label direct, on-site water separately from indirect water used in electricity generation.
- Account for cooling technology, climate, server utilization and the grid’s electricity mix.
- Define whether land means the facility site alone or includes related energy infrastructure.
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