Data Centres’ Used 514 million Litres of Public Water This Summer
Data Centres’ Used 514 million Litres of Public Water This Summer
Text: Izzy Copestake
While the rest of the country was encouraged to report their neighbours for watering their plants.
During Ireland’s record breakingly hot summer, data centres’ water use has doubled across the country, compared with stats from the beginning of the year. These figures come from a desktop review of known data centres in Ireland by Uisce Éireann, who presented the figures to Labour TD Ciarán Ahern.
The review also found that 57 data centres connected to the public water supply, using 17 million litres of water per day.
During the first 4 months of the year, data centres drank up 276 million litres of water, that’s 9 million litres of the public water supply per day. However, this is much less than the summer months, which saw 514 million litres used, that’s 17 million litres of public water per day.
July saw the most water used, with over 200 million litres of water from the public supply being used, which is the same as roughly 50,000 people would consume.
In a data centre, water is used for cooling, so as temperatures rise, more water is needed to cool the data centre down. During Ireland’s particularly hot and dry summer this year, the public were given a hosepipe ban and encouraged to report neighbours who broke the ban. Commercial users, such as data centres, are not included in the ban.
“This is yet another example of the preferential treatment given to big businesses and tech oligarchs by the State,” said Labour TD Ciarán Ahern.
These water statistics are causing outrage, but data centres’ electricity is an even more significant issue. According to the Central Statistics Office, the percentage share of total metered electricity consumption used by data centres rose to 23% in 2025, up from just 5% in 2015, meaning that data centres now pull more power than every urban household in the country combined.
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