Nobody talks about water when they talk about artificial intelligence. They talk about energy, chips, the speed of the models and how much they cost. But there is one resource that is silently being depleted every time someone asks Gemini a question, uses Google search, or trains a model from scratch.

Fresh water is at the center of one of the most urgent environmental debates in the technology sector, and Google has just taken a step that no one expected so soon: publicly recognize the problem and present a plan with figures, deadlines and real commitments to reverse it before the end of this decade.

The ecological problem that nobody wanted to see

Every time you use Gemini, ask a search engine a question, or train an AI model, the servers behind that action generate heat. And that heat needs to cool down. The most efficient method is still water, which absorbs heat and evaporates. The result is brutal and increasing water consumption.

The numbers are hard to ignore. Google consumed around 22.7 billion liters of water in 2024 in its data centers alone. A study from the University of California, Riverside, estimated that asking up to 50 questions on an AI like ChatGPT can consume half a liter of water. And if we extrapolate that to a global scale, with billions of queries a day, the impact stops seeming anecdotal and becomes a real environmental crisis.

By 2030, according to recent projections, the water consumption associated with artificial intelligence could be equivalent to that of 1.3 billion people. It is a figure that deserves pause, reflection and, above all, action.

Google's plan in five commitments

On June 3, Google published a blog with five specific commitments in water matters. These are not vague promises or pretty statements of intent for sustainability reporting. They are measurable commitments, with figures, dates and projects underway.

The most ambitious is the first: replenishing more water than its data centers consume by 2030. That does not mean equaling consumption, but exceeding it. Google has set a goal of replacing 120% of the water it uses, which means returning more to the environment than it extracts. To achieve this, the company already has 165 replenishment projects underway distributed in 97 watersheds, which are expected to return more than 19 billion gallons of water per year in 2030, an amount enough to supply the entire city of Los Angeles for more than 40 days.

The second commitment aims to modernize the water infrastructure of the communities near its facilities. Google has allocated more than $500 million to improve water supply systems, wastewater treatment and reuse projects. Because the problem is not only the water that Google consumes: it is also the critical state of many pipes and distribution networks that have been without maintenance for decades.

The third point is perhaps the most technical but equally relevant. The company promised to protect the most vulnerable watersheds by choosing air cooling systems instead of water when local resources are under pressure. If an area has high water risk, liquid cooling is not installed.

The fourth commitment speaks of total transparency in the reporting of water consumption. Google was the first major cloud provider to publish annual data on the water use of its data centers, and pledged to continue to do so in greater detail.

The fifth and final axis is to explore alternative sources, such as regenerated wastewater, to reduce dependence on fresh water. In some counties in Georgia, for example, they are already testing this model with promising results.

Additionally, the company announced an additional investment of $17 million for new water management projects in seven US states, including Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska and Texas.

Is this effort enough?

The honest answer is that we don't know yet. By 2025, Google will already replenish more than 7 billion gallons of water thanks to its active projects. That is real progress. But consumption also continues to grow as AI scales, and the gap between what is consumed and what is replenished remains wide.

What is undeniable is that Google is responding to growing public pressure. In many communities in the United States there are active protests against the construction of new data centers, precisely because of their impact on local water resources. Ben Townsend, Google's head of infrastructure and sustainability, said the company wants to provide a “reference model” that other communities can use when evaluating proposals for new data centers.

It's an important step forward, and in the world of technology, a five-point plan with real investments and specific dates is not something you see every day. It remains to be seen if Google—and the rest of the industry—can make that promise a reality before AI takes water away from those who need it most.

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