Fresh-water Footprint Datacenters and international & domestic transparency

 Europe is drying out. But do we actually know who is using our freshwater?

The Netherlands gets plenty of rain.

And yet, the Rhine at Lobith has reached exceptionally low discharge levels. Across Europe, rivers, groundwater reserves and freshwater systems are increasingly under pressure.

At the same time, Europe is rapidly expanding another type of infrastructure: data centres.

For JAS Sustainable Advice, I investigated a simple question:

How much European freshwater is actually being used to keep our digital infrastructure running — and cool?

The answer is surprisingly difficult to establish.

EU data centres were estimated to consume 45–65 TWh of electricity in 2022.

That is 45–65 billion kWh in one year, or an estimated 1.8–2.6% of total EU electricity consumption.

And electricity is only part of the story.

Data centres can use freshwater directly for cooling. How much depends enormously on the technology. Closed-loop and dry-cooling systems can dramatically reduce water consumption, while evaporative cooling can consume substantial quantities of water.

There is also a less visible water footprint: electricity generation itself.

Nuclear, coal and some gas-fired power plants require water for cooling. Wind and solar PV require virtually no cooling water during electricity generation.

So the freshwater footprint of a data centre depends not only on how it is cooled, but also on how its electricity is actually generated.

And then there is the transparency problem.

We still do not have a complete public figure for the freshwater consumption of Europe's data-centre industry. EU reporting requirements have improved the situation, but facility-level information remains incomplete or unavailable.

There is no evidence that data centres are causing Europe's current low river levels.

But Europe is building a rapidly expanding, permanently operating digital infrastructure — accelerated by AI — while freshwater is becoming increasingly stressed.

That raises a question:

If technology already exists to operate data centres with dramatically less freshwater, should water-intensive cooling still be permitted in water-stressed regions?

I have published the full analysis, figures and sources on JAS Sustainable Advice.