Data centre growth leads to massive water and energy demands creating an environmental crisis
Image of data centre by Rsparks 3. Reproduced under creative common licence. From an environmental perspective there is not a lot of good things to say about data centres and their rapid growth. Globally they are using about 2% of global electricity which is estimated to rise to as much as 5% by the end of the decade. Of course the gigawatts of electricity being consumed represents gigatonnes of CO2 emissions. The lesser known fact is that they are consuming about 5 billion m 3 of water every year for cooling. A lot of suggestions have been made as to how this waste heat could be used in particular district heating and heat to electricity conversion. However, according to Diaz-Martin and Berquist (2025) two new innovative ideas are showing huge promise in terms of economic value and contributing to net zero. These are direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide which in theory could remove up to 1,000 megatonnes of CO 2 annually contributing to decarboni...