Data centre

Data centre Ia: water consumption equivalent to 1.3 billion people by 2030

A UN report highlights the huge water impact of artificial intelligence, which is often ignored compared to emissions, with global environmental and social risks.

by Rome Editorial Staff

5 June 2026

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

By 2030, the data centres powering artificial intelligence will consume as much water as the entire population of Sub-Saharan Africa, i.e. over 1.3 billion people.

This is the picture drawn by the new report of the United Nations University's Institute for Water, Environment and Health (Unu-Inweh), published at a time when the race for Ia is increasingly unbridled.

Water and land often ignored

The real problem, the report denounces, is that the environmental impact of Ia is measured by looking almost exclusively at CO₂ emissions, ignoring water and land.

The most striking paradox concerns renewable energy: moving from coal to bioenergy reduces the carbon footprint by 70%, but increases the water footprint by more than 30 times and the land footprint by 100 times.

Another cliché, debunked by the report, concerns consumption: it is not the training of models that is mainly responsible, but their daily use.

The production of a short video with a generative system can require up to 200,000 times more energy than a simple textual request.

Real cases: from Ireland to Uruguay

The study analyses situations that have already occurred. In Ireland, one of Europe's main hubs for data centres, these facilities consumed 21% of the entire national electricity in 2023, exceeding the consumption of the country's entire urban population.

In Uruguay, plans for a new water-intensive data centre overlapped with the drought of 2023, which had already rendered Montevideo's tap water undrinkable.

Electronic waste and inequalities

By 2030, Ia infrastructures could generate up to 2.5 million tonnes of e-waste every year, and the critical raw materials needed for hardware are concentrated in regions with weaker environmental supervision, often in countries of the global South.

The benefits of Ia are concentrated in the North; the environmental costs tend to spill over elsewhere.

What UN experts ask for

The report proposes a 'responsible Ia ecosystem' based on transparency, design efficiency, environmental justice and global cooperation.

Investors and data centre operators should treat energy, water and land as material risks, not externalities; local communities should be involved in decisions from the outset.

"This report is not an indictment of Ai," said Kaveh Madani, director of UN-Inweh.

"It is a call forresponsible use, proactively addressing unwanted impacts to make this technology sustainable and equitable".