The 1.2-gigawatt data center proposed for Delaware City in New Castle County would use a massive amount of water.
Environmental regulators last week said the “Project Washington” data center proposed by Starwood Digital Ventures doesn’t meet Coastal Zone Act regulations. It proposes using 516 diesel-powered generators and a 5-acre tank farm that would store 2.5 million gallons of the fuel.
The vast amount of water required to cool the proposed facility would be more than 9.9 million gallons per year — or up to almost 20 million gallons — according to an application for a Coastal Zone Act status decision filed with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control.
A company spokesperson told WHYY News that once completed the project will use about 12.7 million gallons of water annually. An additional one-time usage of 600,000 gallons will be used as part of a closed loop cooling system, according to the company.
“Veolia has provided Water Capacity Certifications stating that there is adequate water capacity and existing infrastructure to serve the project,” Jim Lamb, a spokesperson for Starwood Digital Ventures’ Project Washington data center, said in an email.
Dozens of similar large-scale data centers are being proposed across the region, and residents increasingly voice concerns about the impact on electricity bills and water usage, which in some areas of the country have threatened drinking water supplies.
Opposition to data centers is growing in part because their heavy energy use has eaten away at supply and driven up the price of electricity. In Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware, more than 50 new data centers are proposed, a majority of which are in Pennsylvania. Data centers also cause local environmental impacts like air pollution.
In his budget address earlier this month, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said the state is poised to be a leader in data center development but proposed a number of safeguards, including the need for the facilities to generate their own power and conserve water.
“I know Pennsylvanians have real concerns about these data centers and the impact they could have on our communities, our utility bills and our environment,” Shapiro said Tuesday during his annual budget address in Harrisburg. “And so do I.”
What are data centers?
Data centers house the computer servers required to run internet services worldwide.
While they have been around since the mid-20th century, the acceleration of power-hungry artificial intelligence has boosted demand for much larger sites that require more energy. President Donald Trump’s administration last year announced plans to accelerate artificial intelligence development with limited regulatory oversight.
Artificial intelligence requires more power at a faster rate than typical internet activities, straining the power grid and leading to increased electricity costs for consumers.
A 2024 Department of Energy report on U.S. data center energy use estimated that data center load growth tripled over the past decade, and would double or triple by 2028. PJM Interconnection, which manages the region’s electrical grid, has pointed to the increase in data centers as a reason for strains on the grid.
The larger the data center, the more power is used — and the more power that’s used, the more water is needed to cool the facilities and their servers to prevent overheating.
How much water do data centers use?
Hyperscale data centers can consume up to 5 million gallons of drinking water per day, and in some areas they have drained resident’s well water supplies.
“There’s a fear that these data centers are so large that they’re going to essentially upset the water economy and the power economy that we know now,” said Al Ortega, a professor of energy technology at Villanova University. “Right now, the predictions for the power utilization are going to be growing with these gigawatt-scale data centers, which is something we’ve never seen before.”
Hyperscale data centers could together consume between 16 billion and 33 billion gallons of water annually by 2028, according to some reports.
However, determining how much water data centers use varies widely, depending on the size of the facility and what kind of technology they use, Ortega said.
How is water used?
Data centers require water to cool a specialized type of computer processor known as GPU chips in the servers. The facilities have previously relied on air cooling, which essentially blows air over the chips. However, because of the intense levels of heat generated by these operations, a lot of water is necessary to cool them, said Benjamin Lee, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Pennsylvania.
During that process, water can be conserved for reuse in a closed-loop system.
However, when it comes to facility-level cooling, which involves circulating water to large cooling towers typically located at the top of the facility, water is evaporated rather than conserved.
This is when most of the water is lost, Ortega said.
“In the case of evaporation, what you’re doing is you’re absorbing heat by causing water to evaporate,” he said. “And when the water evaporates, it turns to vapor, and so then the gas just leaves the top of the cooling tower.”
What do we know about data center impacts in our region?
The Delaware River Basin Commission, which regulates water use throughout the region, hasn’t received any applications for water withdrawals related to data centers.
However, the agency has identified at least 60 smaller-scale data centers within the basin. These data centers receive their water supply from regular water utilities.
DRBC Executive Director Kristen Bowman Kavanagh said it’s difficult to predict the potential impacts of data center growth due to a lack of statistics and transparency from the industry.
“It’s been a little bit of a challenge to think about what the impact might be because that range of water use is highly dependent on the type of cooling technology that’s used,” she said.
That hasn’t stopped the agency from evaluating and preparing for the best and worst impacts.
A data center’s location could also make a big difference.
“If they get sited on larger tributaries versus smaller ones, that could have a large impact on water availability,” Bowman Kavanagh said.
The biggest concern is whether there will be enough water supply during the hottest times of the year, she said. Though the Delaware River basin is rich in water, Bowman Kavanagh said, it could be vulnerable during drought conditions.
The DRBC currently requires thermoelectric facilities that take water from the river to prepare a replacement plan during low flow conditions. The agency could consider something similar if large-scale data centers demand water from the basin.
The Susquehanna River Basin Commission is also closely monitoring data center development and the impact on water supplies, according to a recent message from its director, Andrew Dehoff. On its website, the SRBC writes that “hyperscale data centers have the potential to be among the largest consumers of water in the basin, especially when considered as a whole … Millions of gallons a day is more water than is used by most communities with public drinking water.”
Where do data centers typically receive their water?
Most data centers receive their water from private or municipal water utilities.
During a legislative hearing last year, representatives from Pennsylvania American Water said the biggest strain could be during the warmer months. Water usage can increase during the summer, coinciding with increased residential use as people fill their swimming pools and water their yards and gardens.
That means water providers would be required to construct facilities to meet the needs of these peaks, said Tony Nokovich, vice president of engineering at Pennsylvania American Water, during the public hearing in September.
The large volume of water required to cool data centers can also stress water distribution infrastructure, he said.
Larger water providers such as Pennsylvania American Water are positioned to manage the stress, Nokovich said, but smaller water utilities may not be able to invest in infrastructure upgrades. He stressed the importance of placing data centers in areas where dependable water service is available.
Pennsylvania American Water is able to work with the needs of data centers, Nokovich said in September, as long as these facilities pull their weight for infrastructure and water use costs.
“Data centers should pay the costs associated with the development and infrastructure upgrades necessary to serve them, so our customers do not foot the bill for the investments that they do not benefit from,” he said.
Are there more sustainable options to cool data centers?
Depending on where a data center is located, sustainable solutions are available. Facilities could use dry air-cooling systems, or they could utilize technology that efficiently reuses water.
“The question is, ‘To what extent are you drawing from local water supplies to cool your data center and to what extent is that watershed replenished?’” Penn’s Lee said. “I think that it should be an important criteria for figuring out where a company should build its data centers.”
Villanova’s Ortega said that while water consumption is a valid concern, he said he believes data centers will start to become more sustainable.
Ortega and other researchers at Villanova are researching how to reuse waste heat to cool data centers, and whether data centers that produce their own power can use the heat they generate to produce additional cooling.
“I think evaporative cooling is going to be radically different from what we do now,” he said. “I think all of those are really good engineering challenges, but it takes time.”
