AI Water Use? That’s a Hoax.

Originally published by Townhall

The New York Times, Bloomberg, and Forbes want you to think AI data centers are draining America’s water supply. Liberal senators like Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ed Markey (D-Mass) have piled on, writing a letter to administration officials criticizing data centers in part for their “increasing burdens on water supplies.”

This isn’t idle chatter. Fearmongering about water use has led Denver to consider banning new data centers, Senator Sanders to support a nationwide moratorium on them, and Colorado’s state legislature to propose requiring all data centers to run entirely on renewable energy (never mind that they need non-intermittent energy).

I don’t say this lightly: it’s nonsense. In a new paper, we at the America First Policy Institute looked at the data—and found that the water use scare is really a hoax. Data centers pose no threat to water prices or availability. As one expert has said, “I’ve come to the conclusion that data centers have not raised household water bills at all, anywhere.” On net, they actually benefit consumers and local communities.

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