Of the 809 planned data centers in the United States, 517 are sited in areas that have been in drought conditions for the past year, according to an analysis in The Guardian.
The newspaper cites reporting from June 2025 that finds large data centers can consume as much as 5 million gallons of water per day, equivalent to a town of 10,000 to 50,000 people.
Hyperscale data center operators take a different perspective that highlights the industry trend toward increased use of closed-loop cooling technology, which has a lower water footprint.
Refreshed water stewardship commitments from Google come with a comment that U.S. data centers use less than 1% of the water that Americans use on their lawns annually.
Satya Nadella, the Microsoft CEO, said during a keynote address at the company’s Build conference that next generation closed-loop cooling technology will slash annual AI data center water consumption to “roughly equivalent to what a single restaurant would use.”
News Bytes
Big Batteries: General Motors announced a partnership with grid-storage startup Peak Energy to develop sodium-ion battery technology to help meet rising electricity demand from data centers and other industrial loads. “Sodium-ion batteries work similarly to lithium-ion, but they swap out key materials to make the cells cheaper, longer lasting, and less prone to overheating,” TechCrunch reports. “The trade-off is that sodium-ion batteries need to be larger and heavier to store the same amount of electricity.” The first sodium-ion cells for customer use are expected after 2028, according to CNBC.
Storm Risk: As U.S. data center development shifts to the Southeast, the risk of exposure to damage from tornadoes, hail stones and hurricanes is on the rise, according to an analysis by re/insurer MS Amlin. The company found that of more than 670 data center projects under construction or planned across the United States, 320 are in states with exposure to destructive storms. The finding aligns with separate research from Texas A&M University, which notes that of 2,600 U.S. data centers examined, 34% are in hurricane hotspots, 30% are in tornado hotspots and 29% are in earthquake hotspots, Tech Radar reported.
Mounting Moratoriums: Add Seattle to the growing list of cities and counties that have put temporary or permanent bans on new data centers. The Seattle City Council voted 9-0 on June 9 to enact a one-year moratorium on facilities with a power capacity over 20 megavolt amperes, which is roughly equivalent to 20 megawatts, The Seattle Times reported. Moratoriums are also mounting on the opposite side of the country, according to Axios. In Florida, Pasco County commissioners are considering a one-year moratorium, and commissioners in Hernando County recently voted to advance a one-year moratorium on data centers with a final vote expected in July.
One Cool Thing
Underwater DCs: The world’s first wind-powered underwater data center is in commercial operation off the coast of Shanghai, according to reports in Wired and Data Center Dynamics.
The 24-megawatt facility, a partnership between the Chinese government and HiCloud Technologies, is submerged in the Ling-gang Special Zone, within the China Pilot Free Trade Zone.
Microsoft pioneered the underwater data center concept with Project Natick, deploying a prototype near Scotland’s Orkney Islands in 2018. The tech giant paused work on underwater data centers after the proof-of-concept showed promising results.
Top image: Google’s data center campus in Midlothian, Texas, currently has 10 modular cooling plants, which allow the company to scale cooling capacity up or down to match cooling demand. Photo courtesy of Google.