A study by Alex de Vries-Gao from the VU Amsterdam Institute for Environmental Studies indicates that global AI power demand could hit 23GW, while also consuming 312.5 to 764.6 billion liters of water this year. According to The Verge, this is greater than the amount of power Bitcoin mining used in all of 2024, while consuming about the same volume that the entire world consumes in bottled water in a year.
Although these numbers might seem massive, these are still conservative estimates, especially as big tech companies do not break down the numbers in their annual sustainability reports to show the actual consumption of their AI operations. “There’s no way to put an extremely accurate number on this, but it’s going to be really big regardless,” Alex de Vries-Gao told The Verge. “In the end, everyone is paying the price for this.”
