{"id":2246,"date":"2026-06-17T05:39:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T05:39:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2246"},"modified":"2026-06-17T05:39:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T05:39:22","slug":"panic-over-data-centers-is-wildly-exaggerated-they-use-less-water-than-golf-courses-and-less-energy-than-the-usas-fridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=2246","title":{"rendered":"Panic over data centers is wildly exaggerated \u2014 they use less water than golf courses and less energy than the USA’s fridges"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Data centers have become the chic new enemy among activists.<\/p>\n

Critics claim the centers are using inordinate amounts of electricity and water to power artificial intelligence, inspiring protesters to take to the streets and Democratic lawmakers to head to Albany to stymie their development.<\/p>\n

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However, some experts say the anti-data center push is more of a moral panic than an empirical one, often based on speculative and sometimes bunk projections. <\/p>\n

It seems that data centers are the boogeyman onto which larger fears about the impact of AI are being projected.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe estimates of future data-center development may be overestimated by a factor of three to five,\u201d Jonathan Koomey, an energy researcher who has been studying data-center electricity usage for decades, told The Post. \u201cIt is not as simple as saying, \u2018We don\u2019t want data centers to use water.\u2019 You have to think about the trade-offs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Concerns about data centers have largely centered around the idea that they are massive guzzlers of energy and water, which (alongside aircon) is used to cool banks of servers and electical equipment.<\/p>\n

Worries about water consumption have been popularized via an oft-repeated statistic about the water consumption of a Chilean data center from journalist Karen Hao\u2019s book, \u201cEmpire of AI.\u201d The only problem: Hao had accidentally exaggerated the water usage by a factor of 1,000.<\/p>\n

According to the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, just 0.2% of New York state\u2019s water and 3.5% of the state\u2019s electricity were used by data centers in 2025.<\/p>\n

David Mytton, a researcher of sustainable computing at Oxford University, says \u201cpeople tend to focus on very large numbers\u201d that \u201csound very large by themselves\u201d but are totally devoid of context.<\/p>\n

For example, the last reliable data for data center water usage is a study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which estimated the 2023 data center consumption of water in USA to be 17.4 billion gallons.<\/p>\n

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