US data centers average ~16K gallons of water a day — one-sixth of a golf course
lmoroney · x · 2026-10-28
Amid debates over data-center water use, the author compares national figures: LBNL's 2024 DOE report estimates 17 billion gallons of direct on-site water use in 2023 (48M gallons/day sector-wide), spread over 3,000+ mapped sites ≈ 16,000 gallons/day per site. U.S. golf facilities applied 532 billion gallons of irrigation in 2024 across 13,952 facilities — roughly 100,000 gallons/day each. Even in dry states, golf uses far more total water, though a handful of hyperscale campuses run much wetter than average.
The author treats the data-center figure as a rough average — facilities range from small rooms to giant campuses and cooling design swings the meter — but it's the clearest per-day number grounded in a national total and facility count.
Related event: Data Centers Use Far Less Water Than Golf Courses, Analysis Shows(2 posts)→
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