Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
- Data centers' power and water use may double by 2030, UN says.
- AI's growth could strain land resources and increase electronic waste, report warns.
SINGAPORE — Data centers are expected to consume twice as much power and water by 2030 as they expand to meet the surge in demand from artificial intelligence, U.N. researchers said on Wednesday.
Unless governments heed the rising environmental costs of AI, the rapid rollout could also strain scarce land resources and create mountains of electronic waste, the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health warned in a report.
Last year, data centers consumed 448 terawatt-hours of electricity globally, more than the whole of Saudi Arabia. AI accounted for a fifth of the total.
They also consumed 4.5 trillion liters of water, enough to meet the needs of more than 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa, while generating 189 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.
"The public debate still often treats AI as software, but AI is also physical infrastructure: data centers, electricity generation, cooling systems, transmission networks, chips, minerals, land and water," said Kaveh Madani, the institute's director and the report's lead author.
Annual power consumption from data centers is projected to double to 945 TWh by 2030, around the same as the whole of Japan, with AI accounting for 40% of the total.
Water consumption is expected to reach 9.3 trillion liters, while CO2 emissions will rise to 399 million tons.
The data center land footprint is also forecast to increase from 2,664 square miles last year to more than 14,500 square km by 2030, the report said.
While AI could boost efficiency by optimizing power grids and reducing waste, overall electricity and water demand is still likely to rise as countries and corporations race to build new capacity.
"Right now, the competition for growing faster than others overshadows the very basic principles of sustainable growth," Madani added.
"AI will not simply 'run out' of water or electricity worldwide. But in specific places, poorly planned data center expansion could collide with existing resource pressures. That is why responsible planning matters now, before infrastructure and dependencies become locked in."
