How much water does AI consume?
More or Less
BBC
4.6 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 28 March 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As Artificial Intelligence continues to expand rapidly, some people have raised concerns about its potential environmental impact - in particular its use of water, which is used to cool both data centres and the power generators that supply them with electricity.
One recent book on AI contained the alarming prediction that AI could consume between 4 and 6 trillion litres a year by 2027. Could this eye-popping figure be right? If not, what is the correct figure, and is it a big number?
The devil, as ever, is in the detail, and with the help of expert Alex de Vries-Gao, the More or Loss team has taken a deep dive to get to the truth about AI and water consumption.
If you’ve seen a number in the news and you think More or Less should take a look, email the team on moreorless@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Charlotte McDonald Producer / Reporter: Nathan Gower Series Producer: Tom Colls Programme Coordinator: Brenda Brown Sound Mix: Dave O’Neil Editor: Richard Vadon
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and thanks for downloading the more or less podcast. |
| 0:09.0 | With a programme that looks at the numbers in the news and in life and an AI water consumption. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm Charlotte McDonald. |
| 0:27.3 | When you sit in front of an AI chatbot and start typing away, the responses appear on your screen like magic. |
| 0:30.7 | Information apparently springing out of fresh air. |
| 0:33.6 | The truth is, of course, very different. |
| 0:38.0 | When we send our queries off, these are dealt with by a vast network of data centres which were into action to come up with the answers. These data centres contain |
| 0:43.5 | servers, which themselves contain processing chips. Those run on electricity from the power grid, |
| 0:50.6 | and as they operate, they generate lots of heat and need to be cool to prevent overheating. |
| 0:56.7 | Both electricity generation and cooling data centres use water. |
| 1:01.4 | With AI expanding rapidly, some people are worried about how AI's water use might escalate in the future. |
| 1:09.7 | One striking figure came in a book called Empire of AI, written by the US journalist Karen Howe. |
| 1:17.4 | According to her, surging AI demand could consume 1.1 trillion to 1.7 trillion gallons of fresh water globally a year by 2027, or half the water annually consumed |
| 1:31.9 | in the UK. That's between 4.2 and 6.6 trillion litres of fresh water, which sounds like a big |
| 1:40.5 | number. But should we trust it? |
| 1:50.0 | Nathan Gower has been looking into this one. Hi Nathan. Hi, Charlotte. Nathan, 4 to 6 trillion litres of fresh water sounds like a lot. |
| 1:55.0 | It definitely is, but there's all sorts of problems here. So Howe's claim is about the amount of water that could be consumed. |
| 2:03.0 | This has a specific meaning. It's water that's taken out of a system or source but not returned. |
| 2:09.6 | This happens through evaporation when it's used for cooling, whether that's on-site at data |
| 2:13.9 | centres or off-site at the power plants where electricity is generated. |
| 2:18.1 | They also evaporate water when they cool the generators. |
| 2:21.0 | Okay, so this claim seems to be saying that trillions of litres of water are going to get consumed. |
... |
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