Data centres in Australia's most populous city are set to gobble up about 250 megalitres a day in the next decade, surpassing beer breweries.
With the proliferation of artificial intelligence tools and cloud computing, the storage behemoths are reshaping how governments and businesses are rethinking infrastructure projects.
Sydney Water is already grappling with gushing demand for the valuable resource, which is crucial for cooling overheating storage systems.
"Call it the new gold or the new oil industry, it is rapidly becoming the largest new water demand in the city," the utility's business manager Paul Higham told an industry audience on Wednesday.
One data centre requires about five million litres per day - the equivalent of two Olympic-sized swimming pools or 9000 homes, he noted.
