The Water Footprint of Data Centers
Open accessAbstract
The internet and associated Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) are diffusing at an astounding pace. As data centers (DCs) proliferate to accommodate this rising demand, their environmental impacts grow too. While the energy efficiency of DCs has been researched extensively, their water footprint (WF) has so far received little to no attention. This article conducts a preliminary WF accounting for cooling and energy consumption in DCs. The WF of DCs is estimated to be between 1047 and 151,061 m3/TJ. Outbound DC data traffic generates a WF of 1–205 liters per gigabyte (roughly equal to the WF of 1 kg of tomatos at the higher end). It is found that, typically, energy consumption constitues by far the greatest share of DC WF, but the level of uncertainty associated with the WF of different energy sources used by DCs makes a comprehensive assessment of DCs’ water use efficiency very challenging. Much better understanding of DC WF is urgently needed if a meaningful evaluation of this rapidly spreading service technology is to be gleaned and response measures are to be put into effect.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Initial assessments of data center water footprints demonstrated that both direct cooling water use and indirect water consumption associated with electricity generation contributed significantly to overall environmental impact.
“Initial assessments of data center water footprints demonstrated that both direct cooling water use and indirect water consumption associated with electricity generation contributed significantly to overall environmental impact [23].”
From Navigating Environmental Concerns Confronting U.S. Data Centers Related to Water Quantity and Quality (2026) · cites this paper as [23]
Less is known about the potential presence and fate of chemical additives, corrosion inhibitors, biocides, and concentrated dissolved solids in cooling system effluents.
“less is known about the potential presence and fate of chemical additives, corrosion inhibitors, biocides, and concentrated dissolved solids in cooling system effluents [23].”
From Navigating Environmental Concerns Confronting U.S. Data Centers Related to Water Quantity and Quality (2026) · cites this paper as [23]
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Beloglazov, A., Abawajy, J., & Buyya, R. (2011) · Future Generation Computer Systems · doi:10.1016/j.future.2011.04.017 · Cited by 2,773 · see citing works
Worldwide electricity used in data centers
Koomey, J. (2008) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/3/034008 · Cited by 977 · see citing works
The Water Footprint Assessment Manual
Aldaya, M. M., Chapagain, A. K., Hoekstra, A. Y., & Mekonnen, M. M. (2012) · Routledge eBooks · doi:10.4324/9781849775526 · Cited by 566 · see citing works
United Nations World Water Assessment Programme
Guner, S. (2011) · Digital Commons @ Connecticut College (Connecticut College) · Cited by 407 · see citing works
Water footprint manual: state of the art 2009
Hoekstra, A. Y., Chapagain, A. K., Aldaya, M. M., & Mekonnen, M. M. (2009) · University of Twente Research Information · Cited by 359 · see citing works
The consumptive water footprint of electricity and heat: a global assessment
Mekonnen, M. M., Gerbens-Leenes, P. W., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2015) · Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology · doi:10.1039/c5ew00026b · Cited by 308 · see citing works
Consumptive Water Use for U.S. Power Production
Torcellini, P., Long, N. L., & Judkoff, R. (2003) · doi:10.2172/15005918 · Cited by 215 · see citing works
Best Practices for Data Centers: Lessons Learned from Benchmarking 22 Data Centers
Greenberg, S., Mills, E., Tschudi, B., & Rumsey, P. (2006) · Cited by 214 · see citing works
The effect of data center temperature on energy efficiency
Patterson, M. K. (2008) · I-THERM :/I-THERM - Intersociety Conference on Thermal Phenomena in Electronic Systems · doi:10.1109/itherm.2008.4544393 · Cited by 200 · see citing works
Assessing the environmental impact of data centres part 1: Background, energy use and metrics
Whitehead, B., Andrews, D., Shah, A., & Maidment, G. (2014) · Building and Environment · doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2014.08.021 · Cited by 165 · see citing works
A system of systems approach to energy sustainability assessment: Are all renewables really green?
Hadian, S., & Madani, K. M. (2014) · Ecological Indicators · doi:10.1016/j.ecolind.2014.11.029 · Cited by 154 · see citing works
Self-citationThe location as an energy efficiency and renewable energy supply measure for data centres in Europe
Depoorter, V., Oró, E., & Salom, J. (2014) · Applied Energy · doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2014.11.067 · Cited by 105 · see citing works
Cooling solutions in an operational data centre: A case study
Fakhim, B., Behnia, M., Armfield, S. W., et al. (2011) · Applied Thermal Engineering · doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2011.03.025 · Cited by 104 · see citing works
Oró, E., Depoorter, V., Pflugradt, N., et al. (2015) · Applied Thermal Engineering · doi:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2015.03.001 · Cited by 80 · see citing works
Managing Violations in Service Level Agreements
RANA, O. F., Warnier, M., Quillinan, T. B., et al. (2008) · Springer eBooks · doi:10.1007/978-0-387-78446-5_23 · Cited by 79 · see citing works
The life cycle assessment of a UK data centre
Whitehead, B., Andrews, D., & Shah, A. J. (2015) · The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment · doi:10.1007/s11367-014-0838-7 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
Peoples, C., Parr, G. P., McClean, S. I., Scotney, B. W., & Morrow, P. (2013) · Simulation Modelling Practice and Theory · doi:10.1016/j.simpat.2012.12.008 · Cited by 70 · see citing works
The Water Demand of Energy: Implications for Sustainable Energy Policy Development
Hadian, S., & Madani, K. M. (2013) · Sustainability · doi:10.3390/su5114674 · Cited by 67 · see citing works
Self-citationCharacteristics of low-carbon data centres
Masanet, E. R., Shehabi, A., & Koomey, J. (2013) · Nature Climate Change · doi:10.1038/nclimate1786 · Cited by 65 · see citing works
Low Energy Cooling for Sustainable Buildings
Eicker, U. (2009) · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Case study of a data centre using enclosed, immersed, direct liquid-cooled servers
Quiang, Y., Summers, J. L., Hopton, P., et al. (2014) · doi:10.1109/semi-therm.2014.6892234 · Cited by 49 · see citing works
Profiling Sustainability of Data Centers
Gmach, D., Chen, Y., Shah, A. J., et al. (2010) · IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology · doi:10.1109/issst.2010.5507750 · Cited by 47 · see citing works
Air Conditioning Principles and Systems: An Energy Approach
Pita, E. G. (1970) · Medical Entomology and Zoology · Cited by 43 · see citing works
Water for Energy: Inconsistent Assessment Standards and Inability to Judge Properly
Madani, K. M., & Khatami, S. (2015) · Current Sustainable/Renewable Energy Reports · doi:10.1007/s40518-014-0022-5 · Cited by 41 · see citing works
Self-citationSLA-based optimisation of virtualised resource for multi-tier web applications in cloud data centres
Bi, J., Yuan, H., Tie, M., et al. (2013) · Enterprise Information Systems · doi:10.1080/17517575.2013.830342 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Plug4Green: A flexible energy-aware VM manager to fit data centre particularities
Dupont, C., Hermenier, F., Schulze, T., et al. (2014) · Ad Hoc Networks · doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2014.11.003 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
GreenSLAs for the energy-efficient management of data centres
Klingert, S., Schulze, T., & Bunse, C. (2011) · doi:10.1145/2318716.2318720 · Cited by 26 · see citing works
Novel algorithms and equivalence optimisation for resource allocation in cloud computing
Lin, W., Zhu, C., Li, J., et al. (2015) · International Journal of Web and Grid Services · doi:10.1504/ijwgs.2015.068899 · Cited by 24 · see citing works
Power‐conservative server consolidation based resource management in cloud
Perumal, V., & Subbiah, S. (2014) · International Journal of Network Management · doi:10.1002/nem.1873 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Holistic Datacenter Design in the Open Compute Project
Frachtenberg, E. (2012) · Computer · doi:10.1109/mc.2012.235 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
Water efficiency management in datacenters: Metrics and methodology
Sharma, R. K., Shah, A. J., Bash, C. E., et al. (2009) · IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology · doi:10.1109/issst.2009.5156773 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Rodriguez, D. J., Delgado, A., DeLaquil, P., et al. (2013) · World Bank, Washington, DC eBooks · doi:10.1596/16536 · Cited by 21 · see citing works
Maurice, E., Dandres, T., Moghaddam, R. F., et al. (2014) · Advances in computer science research · doi:10.2991/ict4s-14.2014.35 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
Integrating data centres into demand-response management: A local case study
Berl, A., Klingert, S., Beck, M. T., et al. (2013) · Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society · doi:10.1109/iecon.2013.6699905 · Cited by 14 · see citing works
Optimizing Water Efficiency in Distributed Data Centers
Ren, S. (2013) · International Conference on Cloud and Green Computing · doi:10.1109/cgc.2013.19 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Virtualised load management algorithm to reduce CO2 emissions in the data centre industry
Uddin, M., Memon, J., Rozan, M. Z. A., Alsaqour, R. A., & Rehman, A. U. (2015) · International Journal of Global Warming · doi:10.1504/ijgw.2015.067413 · Cited by 12 · see citing works
Life cycle assessment of videoconferencing with call management servers relying on virtualization
Vandromme, N., Dandres, T., Maurice, E., Samson, R., Khazri, S., Moghaddam, R. F., Nguyen, K. K., Lemieux, Y., & Cheriet, M. (2014) · Advances in computer science research · doi:10.2991/ict4s-14.2014.34 · Cited by 10 · see citing works
Cloud Sustainability Dashboard
Arlitt, M. F., Banerjee, S., Bash, C. E., et al. (2010) · IEEE International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology · doi:10.1109/issst.2010.5507751 · Cited by 8 · see citing works
Leitner, P., Dustdar, S., Wetzstein, B., et al. (2012) · doi:10.5555/2666742.2666752 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Basmadjian, R., Müller, L. K. A., & de Meer, H. (2014) · Ad Hoc Networks · doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2014.11.007 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
Psychrometric Bin Analysis for Alternative Cooling Strategies in Data Centers
Metzger, I., VanGeet, O., Rockenbaugh, C., et al. (2011) · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Leitner, P., Dustdar, S., Wetzstein, B., et al. (2012) · doi:10.1109/s-cube.2012.6225506 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
Building Application Profiles to Allow a Better Usage of the Renewable Energies in Data Centres
Dupont, C. (2015) · Lecture notes in computer science · doi:10.1007/978-3-319-15786-3_8 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
The changing geography of data centres in the UK
Jones, P. M., Comfort, D., & Hillier, D. (2013) · Geography · doi:10.1080/00167487.2013.12094361 · Cited by 4 · see citing works
Distributed thermal aware load balancing for cooling of modular data centres
Doyle, J. C., Knorn, F., O’Mahony, D., & Shorten, R. N. (2013) · IET Control Theory and Applications · doi:10.1049/iet-cta.2011.0733 · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Maimoun, M. A. (2015) · Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communication Research · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Half of Data Centres are Now Using Natural Cooling
Foster, P. J. (2011) · The guardian/Guardian on CD-ROM/Guardian · Cited by 3 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Koomey, J.G. Growth in Data Center Electricity Use 2005 to 2010; Anal Press: Oakland, CA, USA, 2011; pp. 1-24.
- Ackerman, J. What a Water-Cooled HVAC System Can Do for Your Building. Buildings 2008, 102, 72-76.
Cited by
Sorted by citations
The environmental footprint of data centers in the United States
Siddik, M. A. B., Shehabi, A., & Marston, L. (2021) · Environmental Research Letters · doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abfba1 · Cited by 281 · see citing works
Jahangir, M. H., Mokhtari, R., & Mousavi, S. A. (2021) · Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments · doi:10.1016/j.seta.2021.101220 · Cited by 68 · see citing works
Luccioni, A. S., Strubell, E., & Crawford, K. (2025) · Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency · doi:10.1145/3715275.3732007 · Cited by 71 · see citing works
“Corporate reports have revealed the scale of water demand increases, with Microsoft reporting a 34% increase in global water consump-tionbetween 2021and 2022,topping 1.7billion gallons, while Google observed a 20% uptick in the same period [42, 78].”
The water use of data center workloads: A review and assessment of key determinants
Lei, N., Lu, J., Shehabi, A., & Masanet, E. (2025) · Resources, Conservation and Recycling · doi:10.1016/j.resconrec.2025.108310 · Cited by 79 · see citing works
Soares, I. V., Yarime, M., & Klemun, M. (2024) · Environmental Science & Policy · doi:10.1016/j.envsci.2024.103769 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Estahbanati, S., Cutting, A. L., Chimchirian, R., Fusco, J., & Love, A. H. (2026) · Journal of Environmental Protection · doi:10.4236/jep.2026.174010 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Ristic, B., Madani, K., & Makuch, Z.
- Affiliations
- Center for Environmental Policy, Imperial College London, London SW7 1NA, UK
- Imperial College London (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Madani, Kaveh
- Venue
- Sustainability
- Publisher
- MDPI AG
- Published
- 2015-08-18
- Volume
- 7
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 11260-11284
- ISSN
- 2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W1532205819
- Cited by
- 81
- References
- 47
- Citations by year
- 2026: 17 · 2025: 15 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 12 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 3 · 2017: 1 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 0.80
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- dx.doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Spiral (Imperial College London) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- European Commission
- Natural Environment Research Council
- Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Green IT and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Environmental Engineering › Environmental Impact and Sustainability
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Water Science and Technology › Water-Energy-Food Nexus Studies
- Keywords
- water footprint, data centers, information and communication technologies, data center cooling, energy consumption, water use efficiency, data traffic, environmental impact of IT
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
