Experts on Building Water Resilience in the AI Boom
The rapid expansion of AI infrastructure is colliding with one of the world's most pressing resource challenges: water scarcity. In a recent webinar hosted by the Alliance for Global Water Adaptation (AGWA), experts from across the water and technology sectors gathered to explore the complex relationship between data centers and water resilience and plot a resilient path forward.
AGWA’s Executive Director John Matthews opened the session framing water as "a medium of change and connection" that deserves the same careful management as a money supply. Data centers are a growing part of global economic development, but their relationship with water involves real trade-offs that need to be understood and managed.
Josh Weinberg, Senior Policy Advisor at AGWA, set the scene: digital infrastructure investment is projected to account for 1% of global GDP over the next five years, AI data centers – both training and inference centers – can be 50 to 100x larger than traditional cloud computing centers, and direct water demand is projected to double within that same period. As Weinberg put it, "A model where developers find land and energy and then figure out water later won't work."
Planning is fundamental but remains daunting, not least due to significant knowledge gaps. Good local data on catchments, ecosystem water needs, and actual water availability is often absent, making it difficult to understand the cumulative impacts data centers can have, and to avoid tipping points in watershed health.
Marissa Streyle, Alliance for Water Stewardship’s Sector Lead, echoed the opportunity and challenge highlighted by Weinberg: "There's an opportunity to implement water stewardship from the jump… but collecting data on the catchment can be a little bit time-consuming, and time is money." Streyle shared the guidance from their report series on water stewardship in the technology and microelectronics sector.
Emma Miller, Xylem’s VP of Sustainability and Social Impact, reinforced this urgency, noting that water demand across the AI value chain is expected to increase by 129% by 2050, adding roughly 54 billion cubic meters of annual water demand, and that this demand is "rising quickly, and unfortunately, often in places least equipped to handle it." Miller shared insights from Xylem’s report Watering the New Economy on how the new – digital – economy is reshaping water demand while creating shared opportunities for resilient, sustainable growth.
Encouragingly, successful strategies already exist – the challenge now is scaling them.
Amazon’s Water Sustainability Lead, WiIl Hewes, shared the four key principles of their approach to the designing and managing of data centers outlined in their AI-Water Nexus report: 1) developing tailored, location-specific water strategies; 2) maximizing efficiency: Amazon has improved its water efficiency by 40% over recent years; 3) prioritizing recycled water over potable supplies; 4) investing in replenishment projects that return water to local communities.
Amazon has funded more than 45 replenishment projects collectively returning 18 billion liters of water to communities annually, a concrete demonstration of what is possible when water is treated as a strategic priority rather than an afterthought.
At the utility level, Marshall Brown, General Manager of Aurora Water in Colorado offered a compelling example of how to manage new industrial water users without compromising basin health. Aurora developed – and eventually codified – water use efficiency criteria that all large users, including data centers, must meet. Aurora is now home to the largest data center in Colorado with one of the lowest water footprints in the industry. "Communicating transparently early and often is working really well," Brown noted, adding that neighboring utilities, including Denver Water, have since reached out to learn from Aurora's approach as they grapple with similar pressures.
Achieving water resilience requires trust, shared responsibility and investment across sectors.
In her closing remarks Betsy Otto, concluded that the best-case scenario would see coordinated reform with industry, government, and communities working in sync. Aging water infrastructure – already underfunded and increasingly stressed by climate change – needs significant capital, and the data center industry's dependence on stable water resources gives it a clear incentive to invest.
Achieving a resilient future for companies and communities will require clearer planning requirements, better local data, and a shared commitment to treating water not as a secondary concern, but as a foundational – enabling – condition for the digital economy to thrive.
This webinar acted as the start of a conversation that must get this right, to have any chance of a resilient future.
AGWA has written several articles on the topic on our blog. If you or your organization are looking to explore how to work with AGWA on this topic or related initiatives, please do not hesitate to reach out to our team.