The Rising Tide of Data Centers: What Virginia's Water Consumption Means for Real Estate

Water consumption by dozens of facilities in Virginia’s “data centre alley” has jumped by almost two-thirds since 2019. Demand for computing infrastructure is set to “explode” due to A.I. Virginia is home to the world’s largest concentration of data centres, including facilities used by Big Tech groups Amazon, Google and Microsoft. The vast warehouses full of computers and networking gear used at least 1.85 billion gallons of water in 2023, up over 55% from 1.13 billion gallons used in 2019. US data centres consumed more than 75 billion gallons of water in 2023.