(2026-03-05) Ai Data Centers What To Know About Their Water And Energy Use

Macy Meyer: AI Data Centers: What to Know About Their Water and Energy Use. When people find out I’m a journalist who covers AI, they often ask about the drastic energy consumption of AI data centers. Are these centers using up all of our drinking water?

Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, recently faced criticism after calling some of these concerns, particularly those around water, “totally fake.” It all stems from a Q&A session hosted by The Indian Express newspaper. Around the 26-minute mark of the interview, Altman was asked to defend certain criticisms of AI, including the amount of natural resources it takes to power large language models like ChatGPT.

Altman responded, “(criticism of AI for overuse of) water is totally fake,” saying that while extreme water use “used to be true,” OpenAI no longer does evaporative cooling.

How do AI data centers use water?

Traditionally, water in AI data centers is used in two ways: evaporative cooling (consuming water) and closed-loop systems (recirculating water).

Evaporative cooling is a ventilation technique that uses the natural process of evaporation to convert liquid water into water vapor, which absorbs heat during the process. Closed-loop cooling is a more resource-efficient process that reuses the water to dissipate heat without evaporation or consumption.

OpenAI says it is moving away from the more costly evaporative cooling systems. However, 56% of data centers still use this method in some form over closed-loop systems, according to a January 2026 report from global water technology company Xylem and market research firm Global Water Intelligence. The research anticipates that AI water consumption will spike nearly 130% by 2050.

While renewable solutions could be the path forward, solar (or wind) energy is still only part of the mix of energy generation used by data centers. They generally rely on the grid itself, which is still largely powered by the burning of fossil fuels like natural gas.