Comparing Data Center Water Use to Golf Courses
Simon Willison · rss · 2026-07-17
Simon Willison discussed the water consumption stress of hyperscale data centers, offering a sarcastic alternative: buying exclusive golf courses, turning them into parks and bird-watching spots, and converting their members into "birders" to achieve more sustainable resource usage. He also provided water usage comparison data: - Google's 2025 water consumption is roughly 10.9 billion gallons, translating to about 30 million gallons/day - The Coachella Valley has about 120 golf courses, each consuming around 800 acre-feet annually, equivalent to about 750,000 gallons/day - If Google purchased about 1/3 of these (40 courses), it would theoretically match this scale of water usage The post's tags explicitly highlight the theme as AI energy/water consumption.
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