The short answer: no, one AI prompt does not drink a bottle of water. The 2023 study behind that claim gave one 500 milliliter bottle for somewhere between 10 and 50 responses, and later estimates are lower still. In 2023, US data centers used about 17 billion gallons of water on site for cooling, and about 211 billion more at the power stations that made their electricity. US golf courses put down about 531 billion gallons in 2024, and American homes use nearly 8 billion gallons a day outdoors, mostly on lawns. The real case against data centers is electricity: they are expected to account for about half of all growth in US electricity demand to 2030.
You have decided that data centers are the villain. You have seen the posts, and you have shared the posts. So here are three things, in order, and you will dislike at least two of them. The numbers you have been repeating are wrong. The worry underneath them is not, and I am not going to pretend it is. And once both of those are out of the way, there is the thing you have been standing next to the whole time, saying nothing. Sit down.
Does one AI prompt use a bottle of water?
No. The claim that every question you type into an AI drinks a whole 500 milliliter bottle comes from a 2023 study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, called Making AI Less Thirsty. What that study actually estimated was that an older model, GPT-3, needed about one bottle for roughly 10 to 50 medium-length responses, depending on where and when it ran. Somewhere between the paper and your feed, ten to fifty became one. And the study's own figure has been argued down since: one widely read independent estimate puts a typical chatbot query nearer 5 milliliters. So you were off by a factor of ten to a hundred, on a number that depends entirely on what you decide to count. Outstanding work. A perfect record.
Sources: Li, Yang, Islam and Ren, Making AI Less Thirsty (arXiv, 2023); Sean Goedecke, the water impact of AI
Why are data center water numbers so far apart?
Because there are two kinds of water in this argument and people mash them together. There is the water the building itself uses to cool its computers. That is the direct number. And there is the water used somewhere else, at a power station, to make the electricity the building runs on. That is the indirect number. For US data centers in 2023, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory put direct cooling water at about 17 billion gallons, and indirect water at about 211 billion: roughly twelve times as much. Neither figure is a lie. But quote one while picturing the other and you get nonsense, which is what has been going round.
Sources: Shehabi et al., 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; McCauley and Scanlan, The Conversation, 2025
What is the strongest case against data centers?
I do not work for them and I do not like them, so here it is, stated properly. In the United States, data centers are expected to account for roughly half of all the growth in electricity demand over the next five years. Not half of the electricity. Half of the growth: of every new unit of power the country is expected to need, about one in two goes to a building full of computers. Worldwide the share is far smaller, under a tenth of the growth, so this is much more an American problem than a planetary one. But in America it is real.
And it is concentrated. A data center lands on one grid, in one county, drawing on one aquifer. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee note that data centers compete with existing water users, may deplete local groundwater, and in some cases use more than a quarter of a community's water supply. A national average does not answer a local complaint, and anyone waving one at you is dodging. The trend matters too: Lawrence Berkeley projects that data centers' direct water use could double, or even quadruple, by 2028. If you are worried about the direction of travel, you are not being stupid. You are being early.
Sources: Carbon Brief, on the International Energy Agency's projections; McCauley and Scanlan, The Conversation, 2025
How much electricity do data centers use?
About 1.5 percent of the world's electricity. The International Energy Agency puts data centers at about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, and expects that to roughly double, to about 945, by 2030. That is fast growth and it deserves the attention. But be consistent about scale. Between now and 2030, the extra electricity the world is expected to need for data centers is about 530 terawatt-hours. The extra for air conditioning is about 651. The extra for electric cars is about 838. Air conditioning is set to add more demand than artificial intelligence, and I have not seen a single protest sign about air conditioning. Nobody is standing outside a shop shouting about split units.
Sources: International Energy Agency, Energy and AI; Carbon Brief, five charts on data centre energy use
Do golf courses use more water than data centers?
Yes, by a long way, on the same measure. In 2024 US golf courses put down about 1.63 million acre-feet of water, according to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. An acre-foot is about 325,851 gallons, so that is roughly 531 billion gallons a year, or about 1.46 billion gallons a day. Set that against data centers' 17 billion gallons of direct cooling water and golf uses about thirty times as much. Add every drop the power stations used to make the data centers' electricity as well, about 228 billion gallons in all, and golf still uses more than twice as much. On grass. So that a small number of people can hit a ball across it.
I want to be fair to golf, because I am fair to everyone whether they deserve it or not. That 2024 figure is 31 percent less than golf used in 2005. They have done real work. It is still thirty times.
Sources: GCSAA, Golf Course Environmental Profile water survey, 2025; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The gallons per day and the ratios are our own arithmetic from those two sources.
How much water goes on American lawns?
This is the biggest number on this page. The Environmental Protection Agency puts residential outdoor water use at nearly 8 billion gallons a day, mainly for landscape irrigation. That is about 2.9 trillion gallons a year: roughly 170 times what every data center in the country used for cooling in 2023, and about 13 times their total even with the power stations' water added in. And the EPA says as much as half of the water used outdoors is lost to wind, evaporation and runoff. Not used. Lost. Sprayed into the breeze, evaporated off hot pavement, poured onto grass in the rain by a timer nobody has touched since it was installed. Half of that lawn water would be more than six times the data centers' entire footprint, power stations included. There is no server in that number. That is sprinklers, at noon, watering a pavement.
Sources: EPA WaterSense, outdoor water use; EPA WaterSense, statistics and facts. The yearly totals and ratios are our own arithmetic.
What makes one data center thirstier than another?
The design and the location, and the difference between a good site and a bad one is enormous. An evaporative cooling system pumps cold water through the building and vents the heat away as steam, so it needs a constant supply of water. A closed-loop system does not need large volumes of water added all the time, but it uses a lot more energy to run its chillers. So the useful questions are these. Where does the electricity come from, since the indirect water is twelve times the direct? How is the building cooled? And where is it being built? The same building is a reasonable idea in a cold, wet place with plenty of grid, and a bad one on an aquifer that is already running short. Not one of those questions fits on a placard, which is precisely why so few people ask them.
Source: McCauley and Scanlan, The Conversation, 2025
So
Data centers are not innocent. They are the fastest-growing source of electricity demand in America, the trend is going the wrong way, and that was said out loud, here, before any of the jokes. But they use about 1.5 percent of the world's electricity, and a small fraction of the water your neighbors pour onto grass they walk on twice a year. And the video telling you data centers are ruining the planet was stored in a data center, and recommended to you by a machine in a data center, at three in the morning. The planet does not care what things look like, you decorative sprinkler. It only counts what they use.
So which number surprised you most: the bottle, the golf or the lawns? Say so under the video on Facebook. Then go and turn your irrigation timer down.
Questions people ask
Does ChatGPT use a bottle of water per question?
No. The 2023 study behind the claim estimated about 500 milliliters of water for roughly 10 to 50 responses from GPT-3, not for one. Later independent estimates for a typical chatbot query are lower, around 5 milliliters.
How much water do US data centers use?
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimated that US data centers used about 17 billion gallons of water directly for cooling in 2023, plus about 211 billion gallons indirectly, at the power stations that generated their electricity.
Do golf courses use more water than data centers?
Yes. US golf courses applied about 1.63 million acre-feet, roughly 531 billion gallons, in 2024. That is about thirty times data centers' direct cooling water, and more than twice their total including the power stations' water.
How much electricity do data centers use?
About 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, around 1.5 percent of the world's electricity, according to the International Energy Agency, which expects it to roughly double by 2030. In the United States, data centers are expected to account for about half of electricity demand growth over that period.
How much water do American lawns use?
The EPA puts US residential outdoor water use at nearly 8 billion gallons a day, mainly for landscape irrigation, and says as much as half of outdoor water is lost to wind, evaporation and runoff.
Sources
Every claim in the episode was sourced before it was narrated, and every figure on this page was checked against its source again for this post. Where the published numbers have changed since the episode, this page uses the current ones. The main reports:
- Shehabi et al. (2024). 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL-2001637.
- International Energy Agency (2025). Energy and AI.
- Li, Yang, Islam and Ren (2023). Making AI Less Thirsty: Uncovering and Addressing the Secret Water Footprint of AI Models. arXiv 2304.03271.
- Golf Course Superintendents Association of America (2025). Golf Course Environmental Profile, water use survey.
- US Environmental Protection Agency. WaterSense, outdoor water use statistics.
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