The Hidden Cost of Your Cloud: How Data Centers Are Draining America’s Resources

By Dominick Bianco, Editor-in-Chief

You probably don’t think much about where your emails live, or how Netflix streams your favorite shows, or what happens when you ask ChatGPT a question. The answer exists “in the cloud” – a term that sounds ethereal, weightless, almost magical.

Except there’s nothing ethereal about it.

Every Google search, every TikTok video, every Zoom call exists in a physical building somewhere, humming with servers that generate tremendous heat and consume staggering amounts of electricity and water. These buildings – data centers – have become the invisible infrastructure of modern life. And they’re quietly creating an environmental and economic crisis that most Americans don’t even know exists.

The Electricity Problem

Let me paint you a picture: A single large data center consumes as much electricity as 100,000 homes. Not annually – continuously. Right now, data centers account for roughly 3% of America’s total electricity consumption. That’s already more than the entire residential consumption of many states.

But here’s where it gets concerning: With artificial intelligence exploding onto the scene, experts project data centers will consume 8% of U.S. electricity by 2030. For perspective, that’s enough power to run every home in California, Texas, and Florida combined.

Someone has to generate that electricity. Someone has to build the transmission lines. Someone has to maintain the grid reliability. And increasingly, that “someone” footing the bill isn’t the tech giants running these facilities – it’s you.

In Northern Virginia, home to the world’s largest concentration of data centers, these facilities now consume over 25% of the region’s electricity. Residential rates have climbed accordingly. In Georgia, where data centers are proliferating rapidly, utility regulators are debating whether the state’s 4 million homeowners should subsidize billions in new infrastructure to support data center growth. The answer, in many cases, has been yes – your electric bill is subsidizing Google’s server farm.

The Water Crisis Nobody’s Talking About

The electricity consumption gets attention, but the water usage is even more alarming – and far less discussed.

Data centers generate enormous heat. All those servers running 24/7 need cooling, and the most efficient way to cool them is through evaporative cooling systems. Water absorbs the heat, then evaporates, carrying that heat away into the atmosphere.

The scale is staggering. Let’s break down what this actually means in terms Americans can understand:

Daily water consumption:

A typical hyperscale data center uses between 300,000 and 5 million gallons daily
The average American household uses about 300 gallons per day
That means a single large data center consumes as much water as 1,000 to 17,000 homes

Annual consumption:

Google’s data centers consumed 4.3 billion gallons in 2022 – enough water for 39,000 American homes for an entire year
Microsoft used roughly 1.7 billion gallons in 2021 – equivalent to the annual consumption of 15,500 households
Meta (Facebook) consumed 2.7 billion gallons in 2022 – matching the water usage of 24,500 families

AI’s water footprint:

A single ChatGPT conversation consumes the equivalent of a 16-ounce bottle of water
Training GPT-3 consumed an estimated 700,000 gallons – enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool
As AI usage expands, researchers estimate these models could consume water equivalent to half the annual domestic water usage of the United Kingdom by 2027

Regional impact:

In Mesa, Arizona, Google’s data center complex uses as much water as 1,500 homes annually – in a region facing its worst drought in 1,200 years
In South Carolina, Google’s facilities consume enough water daily to serve 550 average households – water drawn from aquifers already stressed by climate change and overuse
In Georgia, where data centers have become a major growth industry, the collective water consumption of these facilities rivals the usage of a mid-sized Georgia city – we’re talking about water equivalent to tens of thousands of Georgia households being evaporated to cool servers while the state grapples with recurring drought conditions

The Sustainability Problem: Water That Never Comes Back

Here’s what makes this particularly troubling: That’s not water being recycled back into the watershed. It’s evaporated – gone.

When you take a shower or water your lawn, that water eventually returns to the local water cycle through treatment plants or ground absorption. But data centers tell a different story. They evaporate about 80% of the water they draw, discharging only 20% back to wastewater treatment facilities. In contrast, residential water usage loses just 10% to evaporation, discharging the other 90%.

Think about that ratio: Data centers permanently remove eight times more water from local communities than residential use does.

Evaporative cooling literally sends that water into the atmosphere as vapor, permanently removing it from local water resources. It might eventually rain down somewhere – maybe hundreds of miles away – but it’s gone from the community that provided it. The local rivers, aquifers, and reservoirs that serve residents don’t get that water back.

In Texas alone, data centers will use 49 billion gallons of water in 2025. By 2030, that number explodes to 399 billion gallons – equivalent to drawing down Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, by more than 16 feet in a single year.

And here’s the kicker: Roughly two-thirds of data centers built since 2022 have been located in water-stressed regions. Arizona, Nevada, and parts of Texas – already facing water scarcity – are attracting data centers with tax incentives and cheap electricity, even as they ask residents to limit lawn watering and ration household consumption.

Georgia represents a particularly stark example. The state has approximately 4 million households. As data center development accelerates across metro Atlanta and other regions, these facilities collectively consume water that could serve a significant percentage of Georgia’s residential population. Yet when drought conditions emerge, it’s homeowners who face watering restrictions while data centers continue evaporating millions of gallons daily under their special-rate agreements.

In some communities, a single data center consumes more water than all the residential households in town combined.

The disconnect is jarring.

The Climate Feedback Loop: The Inconvenient Truth About Water Vapor

Here’s where the climate conversation gets really uncomfortable – especially for the advocates who’ve spent decades focused almost exclusively on carbon dioxide.

Most people don’t realize that the water vapor from data centers doesn’t just disappear harmlessly into the sky. It becomes part of a dangerous climate feedback loop that’s intensifying extreme weather across the planet. And here’s the part that should shake up every climate summit and environmental policy debate:

Water vapor is Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas, responsible for about half of Earth’s greenhouse effect. Not carbon dioxide. Not methane. Water vapor.

Since the 1970s, the rise in atmospheric water vapor has increased global heating by an amount comparable to that from rising carbon dioxide. Read that again: The warming contribution from increased water vapor rivals that of CO2 – the greenhouse gas that dominates virtually every climate policy, carbon tax, and international agreement.

Yet where’s the outcry about industrial water evaporation? Where are the regulations on data centers pumping billions of gallons into the atmosphere? Where are the climate activists demanding restrictions on evaporative cooling?

The silence is deafening.

And here’s the troubling physics that makes this crisis even worse: For every degree Celsius that Earth’s atmospheric temperature rises, the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere can increase by about 7%. This creates a vicious cycle:

Greenhouse gases from power plants (many powering data centers) warm the atmosphere
Warmer air holds more water vapor – including what’s evaporated from data center cooling towers
More water vapor amplifies the warming because it’s also a greenhouse gas
This leads to more evaporation, continuing the cycle

The effects are already visible and devastating:

More intense storms: Water vapor makes storms more powerful because moisture rises into the atmosphere and concentrates in weather systems. The same physics that explains why warmer air can “hold” 7% more water for every degree of warming also explains why we’re seeing catastrophic flooding events that used to be once-in-a-century occurrences happening every few years.

Uneven distribution: Higher evaporation and precipitation rates aren’t evenly distributed around the world. Some areas experience heavier precipitation and flooding, while other areas become prone to more severe droughts. Climate models predict coastal regions will become wetter while the middle of continents becomes drier.

Extreme weather amplification: The increased atmospheric moisture doesn’t just make wet places wetter and dry places drier – it intensifies the swings between the two. Regions can experience severe flooding followed by extended drought as the intensified water cycle becomes more volatile.

The Hypocrisy of Climate Policy

Let’s be direct about something: If climate advocates were serious about addressing all major contributors to global warming, industrial water evaporation would be front and center in policy discussions. But it’s not.

Instead, we get carbon credits, carbon taxes, and carbon offset programs while data centers evaporate billions of gallons with virtually no regulatory oversight. We get international summits debating fractions of a degree in temperature targets while ignoring that water vapor – amplified by these very temperature increases – is driving extreme weather that’s killing people and destroying communities.

Why the disconnect?

Carbon dioxide is easier to measure, easier to regulate, and easier to monetize through carbon trading schemes. Water vapor is complicated. It’s part of natural cycles. It’s harder to track. And regulating it would require confronting some of the world’s most powerful tech companies and the industrial processes that drive modern economies.

But difficulty doesn’t excuse willful blindness.

While data centers aren’t the primary driver of atmospheric water vapor changes – that’s ocean evaporation driven by overall warming – they’re contributing to the problem in two devastating ways:

First, they’re locally depleting water resources in already water-stressed regions during droughts, forcing communities to choose between residential water access and tech company profits.

Second, they’re consuming massive electricity (often from fossil fuels) that drives the warming which increases overall atmospheric water vapor, feeding the feedback loop that makes extreme weather worse.

The climate movement talks endlessly about carbon footprints. Where’s the conversation about water vapor footprints? Where are the requirements for data centers to report their atmospheric water contributions? Where are the taxes or penalties for industries that evaporate billions of gallons into an already moisture-saturated atmosphere that’s producing killer hurricanes and devastating floods?

If we’re going to have an honest conversation about climate change, we need to acknowledge all the major players – not just the politically convenient ones.

The Great Subsidy Scheme

States and municipalities compete aggressively to attract data centers, offering massive tax breaks, discounted electricity rates, and infrastructure investments. The pitch is always the same: jobs and economic development.

But the reality rarely matches the promise.

Data centers are highly automated. A facility that might consume as much power as a mid-sized city and as much water as 10,000 homes could employ just 50-100 people. The construction creates temporary jobs, but the long-term employment impact is minimal. Meanwhile, residential ratepayers absorb the cost of grid upgrades, and local water resources get depleted.

In Georgia alone, where officials have aggressively courted data center development, the state’s 4 million households are effectively subsidizing infrastructure for facilities that create a tiny fraction of the jobs promised while consuming resources at residential-equivalent scales measured in the tens of thousands.

In many communities, the math simply doesn’t work. The tax revenue doesn’t offset the infrastructure burden. The jobs don’t materialize as promised. And residents are left with higher utility bills and strained resources.

Environmental Impact Beyond the Meter

The environmental consequences extend beyond direct consumption:

Carbon emissions: Despite tech companies’ net-zero pledges, the electricity consumed by data centers still largely comes from fossil fuels. Even as companies purchase renewable energy credits, the actual electrons powering their servers often come from natural gas or coal plants. About half of the electricity currently used by U.S. data centers comes from fossil fuel power plants, which themselves consume enormous amounts of water to generate steam for their turbines.

Grid strain: The sudden, massive demand from data centers forces utilities to keep older, less efficient “peaker” plants online longer than planned, delaying the transition to cleaner energy.

Water ecosystem disruption: The water withdrawn for cooling (even when returned to waterways) comes back warmer, affecting aquatic ecosystems. The evaporated water is simply lost to local watersheds.

Compounding drought conditions: In the Colorado River Basin, which provides water to 40 million people and is already operating at historic low levels, data centers are consuming water equivalent to tens of thousands of households – water that could otherwise support communities, agriculture, or environmental restoration. In Georgia, during the state’s periodic droughts, data centers continue consuming water at levels that would serve entire neighborhoods, even as residential customers face mandatory restrictions.

Atmospheric moisture contribution: The billions of gallons evaporated annually enter the atmosphere as water vapor, contributing to the climate feedback loop that’s intensifying extreme weather worldwide – from catastrophic floods to severe droughts. This is a direct greenhouse gas contribution that receives virtually no attention in climate policy discussions.

Land use: Data centers require vast footprints. In dense areas like Northern Virginia, they’re consuming agricultural land and green space at an accelerating rate. Where AOL’s old headquarters once had pedestrian trails, tennis courts, and basketball courts serving 5,300 employees, three large data centers now sit behind security fences employing just 100-150 people total.

The AI Acceleration

Just when experts thought they understood data center growth trajectories, artificial intelligence changed everything.

Training a single large AI model can consume as much electricity as 100 American homes use in an entire year. As companies race to develop more sophisticated AI systems, and as AI becomes embedded in everyday applications, the electricity and water demands are exploding beyond previous projections.

Microsoft recently announced plans to restart Three Mile Island’s nuclear reactor exclusively to power its AI data centers. Think about that: A tech company is bringing a shuttered nuclear plant back online because the grid can’t support its AI ambitions.

That’s not sustainable scaling – that’s desperation.

Who’s Watching the Watchers?

The troubling reality is that data center resource consumption largely operates in a regulatory gray zone. There’s no federal oversight of their water usage. There’s virtually no discussion of their atmospheric water vapor contributions in climate policy. Electricity rate structures are decided state-by-state, often in regulatory proceedings where tech companies have far more lobbying resources than citizen groups.

Environmental impact reviews, when they happen at all, often focus on the building itself rather than the operational resource demands. Less than a third of data center operators even measure their water consumption, let alone report it publicly. And water vapor emissions? Those aren’t tracked at all, despite their significant contribution to the greenhouse effect.

And the public? Most people have no idea this is even happening. They don’t know that when their city council approves a new data center, they’re essentially voting to give corporate servers priority access to water that might otherwise go to 5,000 families. Georgia residents don’t realize that their rising utility bills are partially funding infrastructure to support facilities that serve the entire internet while their own community sees minimal direct benefit.

Communities don’t understand that they’re permanently losing water from their local watersheds – water that evaporates into the atmosphere, contributes to climate change, and might rain down on another state entirely while their own aquifers drop to dangerous levels.

Climate advocates don’t acknowledge that the billions of gallons being evaporated are adding a greenhouse gas to the atmosphere that’s just as potent as the carbon emissions they’re fighting to reduce.

What Needs to Change

This isn’t an anti-technology argument. Data centers enable modern life. Remote work, telemedicine, e-commerce, streaming entertainment – all of it requires this infrastructure.

But we need honesty about the costs, and we need accountability – especially from the climate movement that claims to be fighting for the planet’s future:

Comprehensive climate accounting: Climate policy must account for water vapor contributions, not just carbon emissions. If data centers are evaporating billions of gallons that increase atmospheric moisture and amplify warming, that needs to be measured, reported, and regulated just like carbon emissions.

Transparency: Tech companies should be required to publicly report facility-specific electricity and water consumption, not just corporate totals that obscure individual impacts. Georgia residents deserve to know that the new data center down the road uses as much water as their entire county. Communities need to understand that 80% of that water is permanently removed from their local watershed through evaporation and enters the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.

Water vapor impact statements: Environmental reviews must account for the atmospheric impact of water vapor emissions, not just direct resource consumption. The billions of gallons evaporated annually contribute to climate feedback loops that intensify extreme weather worldwide. This should be treated with the same seriousness as carbon emissions.

Fair pricing: If data centers are going to consume residential-scale electricity and water, they should pay residential-scale rates. The current system of special discounts effectively forces Georgia’s 4 million homeowners to subsidize corporate infrastructure. Water rates should also reflect the sustainability impact – water that’s evaporated and lost should cost more than water that’s discharged back into the treatment system.

Climate taxes on evaporation: If we’re going to have carbon taxes, why not water vapor taxes for industrial evaporation? Data centers evaporating millions of gallons should pay a climate impact fee comparable to carbon emissions, since the warming contribution is similar.

Resource planning: Communities should conduct comprehensive resource impact studies before approving data centers, especially in water-stressed or grid-constrained regions. If a proposed facility would consume water equivalent to 10,000 homes, voters should have that information before construction begins. These studies should account for both direct water consumption and the atmospheric impacts of massive evaporation.

Efficiency requirements: Rather than simply building more capacity, mandate aggressive efficiency standards. The technology exists to reduce both electricity and water consumption – it just costs more upfront. Air cooling works in many climates. Closed-loop water systems can dramatically reduce evaporation by up to 70%. Some data centers have even experimented with submerging servers underwater to use natural ocean cooling. These solutions exist; we simply need to require their use.

Location restrictions: Data centers should be prohibited from using evaporative cooling in water-stressed regions. If they want to build in Arizona or drought-prone areas of Georgia, they must use air cooling or closed-loop systems, even if it increases their operating costs. The climate of a region should dictate the technology, not the other way around.

Local benefit agreements: If communities are going to bear infrastructure costs and resource depletion, data centers should provide meaningful compensation – not token gestures, but actual revenue sharing or infrastructure investment proportional to their consumption. If a facility consumes water equivalent to 10,000 homes, it should contribute to water infrastructure at a comparable scale.

Water usage caps in drought regions: In areas facing water scarcity, new data centers should be subject to strict annual water consumption limits tied to residential equivalent usage. During declared drought emergencies, data centers should face the same mandatory restrictions as residents.

Climate movement accountability: Environmental organizations need to expand their focus beyond carbon dioxide. Water vapor is a major greenhouse gas. Industrial evaporation matters. The climate movement cannot claim to be comprehensive while ignoring a warming contributor that rivals CO2 in its impact.

The Bottom Line

The next time you hear about “the cloud,” remember: It’s not floating somewhere in the ether. It’s in a warehouse-sized building consuming as much power as a small city and evaporating enough water daily to serve thousands of families – water that’s permanently removed from local communities and sent into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas.

And increasingly, you’re paying for it – in higher electric bills, strained water supplies, intensified extreme weather, and environmental degradation – while tech companies reap the profits and climate advocates look the other way.

Consider this: Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon together consumed over 10 billion gallons of water in 2022. That’s enough to supply 90,000 American households for an entire year. To put that in Georgia terms, that’s equivalent to the annual water consumption of every household in Athens, Macon, and Savannah combined. And that was before the AI boom.

But it’s not just about the numbers. It’s about the fundamental unsustainability of the model. Data centers evaporate 80% of the water they draw – compared to just 10% for residential use. That water doesn’t return to your community’s rivers or aquifers. It enters the atmosphere as water vapor, contributing to a climate feedback loop that’s making extreme weather worse worldwide.

Since the 1970s, rising atmospheric water vapor has increased global heating by an amount comparable to carbon dioxide. Every billion gallons evaporated by data centers feeds this cycle, intensifying the droughts and floods that devastate communities across America and around the world.

Yet this gets virtually no attention in climate policy discussions. We regulate carbon. We tax carbon. We trade carbon credits. But industrial water evaporation that contributes equally to warming? Crickets.

It’s time to ask why.

We built the internet. We created this digital economy. But we never had a serious conversation about who would pay for the physical infrastructure required to sustain it, or whether that infrastructure was even sustainable when it’s competing directly with residential needs for basic resources like water.

When a data center uses as much water as 10,000 homes while employing 75 people, we need to ask: Is this really the best use of scarce resources? Are temporary construction jobs worth permanent depletion of aquifers? Should corporations get preferential access to water while residents face rationing? Should we allow companies to evaporate billions of gallons into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change, while communities struggle with drought?

And perhaps most importantly: If the climate movement is serious about fighting global warming, why is it ignoring a greenhouse gas contribution that rivals carbon dioxide?

That conversation is long overdue.

Dominick Bianco is Editor-in-Chief of NexfinityNews.com and CEO of Kubera Technology Holdings. He served in the United States Marine Corps and now focuses on investigative journalism exploring the intersection of technology, policy, and public interest