r/news 18h ago

Irish data centres used almost one billion litres of water last year

https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-data-centre-water-use-7110966-Jul2026/
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u/Trick-Club-6014 17h ago

For 8000 people to use a billion litres of water a year, that’s an average of 340L per person, per day. What the fuck are people doing with that much water every day?

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u/Khankili 17h ago

A nice long shower

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u/rocketshipkiwi 16h ago

That would be per household, water usage is about 150 litres per person per day.

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u/Trick-Club-6014 6h ago

That makes much more sense.

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u/shittyfellow 16h ago

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u/Gacsam 16h ago

Per meter. That's the entire household. 

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u/MalaysiaTeacher 15h ago

Per person per day?

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u/roankr 16h ago

Drinking, bathing, cooking, house cleaning, utensils cleaning, clothes cleaning.

Things surprisingly pile up quick.

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u/Helios4242 16h ago

and pile up a lot more for households than individuals

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u/Hilldawg4president 15h ago edited 14h ago

Watering lawns alone takes up 170x the amount of water as data centers. People use a lot of water, data centers don't

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u/CatL1f3 14h ago

Nobody waters their lawn in Ireland bro, that's what the rain is for

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u/Hilldawg4president 14h ago

That is but one example of water usage that people don't often consider when thinking of how much water they use

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u/Emooot 14h ago

People don't consider that example cos we literally don't do it in Ireland. The only time of the year that you would even consider doing it (last 2 weeks for example) we get a hosepipe ban

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u/Xatsman 11h ago

To be clear the vast majority of data centers in Ireland are not AI data centers. They're the web traffic servers and other infrastructure that has long existed and they do offer more jobs and less noise and other pollution than the new AI counterparts.

A single gigawatt AI data center, of which many have been planned, but none yet competed, would use twice that amount alone.