The rapid expansion of Australia's digital economy is coming at a steep and often hidden cost: a massive drain on the nation's precious drinking water supplies. New research and local reports reveal that the country's booming data centre industry, essential for cloud computing and AI, is consuming billions of litres of potable water annually for cooling systems, placing significant strain on communities and resources.
The Thirst of the Digital Age
At the heart of the issue is the fundamental need to keep the vast banks of servers in these facilities from overheating. While some data centres use air cooling, many of the largest and most powerful facilities, particularly those built by tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, rely on evaporative cooling systems. These systems use water in cooling towers, where it evaporates to remove heat, requiring a constant and substantial supply of fresh water to operate effectively.
Investigations focusing on regions like New South Wales and Queensland have uncovered startling figures. For instance, a single large-scale data centre campus can use anywhere between 4 to 8 million litres of drinking water every single day. To put this in perspective, that is equivalent to the daily water use of a town with tens of thousands of residents. Cumulatively, this pushes the industry's annual water footprint into the billions of litres, a resource draw that is escalating in parallel with the global AI boom.
Local Strain and Regulatory Gaps
The impact is being felt acutely at a local level. In Western Sydney, a major hub for data centre development, residents and local officials have raised alarms. The strain on municipal water supplies is becoming a point of conflict, especially in a country familiar with drought and water restrictions. There is a growing concern that essential public water resources are being prioritised for industrial use over community needs.
Compounding the problem is a perceived lack of transparency and cohesive regulation. Water usage by data centres is often not fully disclosed or is obscured within broader industrial consumption data. Furthermore, planning approvals for these facilities frequently fail to thoroughly assess their long-term impact on local water security. Critics argue that data centres are effectively getting a free pass, accessing a critical public utility without sufficient oversight or contribution to the infrastructure costs of securing that supply.
Searching for Sustainable Solutions
The industry and some policymakers point to potential solutions, though each comes with challenges. One alternative is to use treated wastewater or recycled water, known as 'purple pipe' water, for cooling instead of pristine drinking supplies. However, the infrastructure for this is not universally available, and retrofitting existing centres can be costly.
Another avenue is to mandate more efficient cooling technologies, such as advanced air-cooling or liquid immersion cooling, which can drastically reduce or even eliminate water use. The push for greater transparency is also gaining momentum, with calls for mandatory public reporting of water usage and efficiency metrics for all major data centre operators.
As Australia continues to position itself as a key digital hub in the Asia-Pacific region, the tension between technological growth and environmental sustainability is coming to a head. The challenge now is to balance the undeniable economic benefits of the data centre boom with the responsible stewardship of a resource as fundamental as water. Without urgent action to address this 'thirsty work', communities may be left paying the price for the nation's digital ambitions.
