AI Data Centers Projected to Consume Over 1 Trillion Liters of Water Annually by 2028
kpness · reddit · 2026-08-12
Data indicates that by 2028, AI data centers could consume over 1 trillion liters of water annually, with over 90% being indirect consumption from electricity generation rather than on-site cooling.
Additionally, data centers now account for 4.4% of US electricity usage, up from 1.9% in 2018. A single GPT-5 query is projected to use up to 20x more energy than GPT-4. While AI infrastructure is driving a 72% surge in copper demand, it has also improved weather forecasting accuracy by roughly 50%.
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