ELI5 What do people mean when they talk about the water consumption generated by each action? For example, they say that using AI consumes I don’t know how many millions of liters of water. How is that possible? What kind of water is being wasted? Water isn’t renewable when it evaporates and condenses? Or is it a type of “potable” water that is wasted indiscriminately?
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They’re talking about wasting treated water that is clean and prepared for humans to use. While it is true that the amount of water in total on Earth stays relatively stable, not all that water is accessible by humans. And it takes energy to filter and clean water to make sure that humans can use it.
This depends a lot on location and what exactly the water is used for. Computers can be cooled with water so if you run an AI you can do that too, nothing about this is realy special to AI its just that AI uses a lot of computing power compared to a regular PC. And yes this is about clean fresh water not just any form of water. And this is location dependant because there is lots of places on the planet where fresh water is available and other places where its not. Thats why nuclear power plants are mostly located near rivers.
If you are somewhere where water has to be transported or processed like in las Vegas in the middle of a desert that can be an issue.
I dont know that specific report on AI so it would help if you link that source, all articles i have read about this lacked detailed info about how exactly this water is “wasted” cooling cycles are in most cases closed loops that use some natural water source only to transfer the heat to, the liquid that runs through the actual pipes are often not even water but something with higher boiling points.
We’re wasting usable water. Water that’s clean, sanitary, potable, and available to use. Yes there’s a hell of a lot of water in the ocean but it’s not useful at all for drinking or irrigation, unles it is treated by a place that cleans it and removed the salt… A process which is expensive.
You know when it’s really warm outside and your daddy tells you to keep the windows and doors closed to keep the cool air in? Air is abundant, but the inside air has a desirable quality: its coolness. Similarly, water can have desirable qualities. It can be desalinated, without pollutants, and it can be located where it’s needed (close to your mouth). Desirable water is a scarce resource that can be wasted.
it’s not just about the total amount of water on earth but the usable fresh water that’s the issue. like sure there’s tons of ocean water but you can’t drink that without expensive treatment.
so when we waste clean tap water, it’s precious cause it takes energy and resources to make it drinkable in the first place.
plus certain areas have way less fresh water to begin with so wasting it there is an even bigger problem
Even though Earth has a huge amount of water, most of it isn’t usable as drinking water. Rain doesn’t fall evenly across regions, and only a small percentage of Earth’s water is freshwater. That freshwater has to be extracted from aquifers, lakes, or rivers, then treated to make it safe, by removing impurities and killing bacteria. This whole process requires infrastructure, energy, and money.
Desalination can convert seawater to drinking water, but it’s expensive and energy-intensive, so it’s not a realistic go-to solution at scale. That means potable water is a finite, resource-intensive product. Everyone needs it. People, agriculture, manufacturing, and ecosystems all compete for it. So when you run the tap unnecessarily, you’re wasting clean water that could’ve been used for drinking, food production, firefighting, or other essential purposes. You’re also wasting the energy and money it took to make it safe.
AI data centers are a more complicated case. They use water in chillers to keep servers cool. Most of that water recirculates, but some is inevitably lost as vapor and has to be replaced (called “makeup water”). Whether that loss counts as “waste” depends on perspective. You could say it’s justified because AI supports useful services and enables innovation. But technically, yes, that treated water is consumed and partially lost, so it does reduce what’s available for other uses. The key difference is whether the outcome is seen as worth the tradeoff. Letting a faucet run into the drain has no upside. AI cooling at least serves a purpose.
Water is renewable in that sense, but not everywhere gets the same amount of rain, so can run out. It’s not just being potable, you can’t irrigate crops with seawater.
Most of Australia has periods where residential water usage is restricted. For lower levels you can’t water your garden during the day or wash your own car (commercial places recycle water). At higher levels, such as the Stage 5 ones in Orange a few years ago, they recommended a max of 3 minute showers. They never got there, but I believe that the discussions of what stage 6 would be included potentially culling livestock herds so they didn’t need to drink water.
A lot of the time it is portable water. That’s why you don’t let the water run while brushing your teeth and take shorter showers.
Water is a limited resource depending where you are. Even though it may rain again, the reservoir or cistern can only hold a limited amount of water before the excess can’t be saved. That water can be wasted because you currently have a limited supply that needs to last until more water arrives and replaces what was used.