Texas does not know how much water data centers are using.
The Texas Water Development Board uses self-reported data from surveys submitted by data centers to forecast future water usage and to draft water demand projections for the regional and state water supply planning processes.
Kaci Woodrome, a TWDB spokesperson, told Texas Scorecard the self-reported data is validated by “cross-checking seller and buyer-reported sales figures, along with historical trends, to ensure accuracy.”
However, “there is no state government authority that maintains a comprehensive list of data centers in the state,” Woodrome said. She estimated that there are “approximately 350 to 400 data centers across the state.”
Assistant Secretary of State for Communications Alicia Pierce confirmed this to Texas Scorecard, stating her agency also does not have the information.
According to TWDB, the agency sent out an estimated 70 surveys to data centers in 2024, asking how much groundwater and surface water they used each month and who was supplying it. Only 18 responded.
While data centers are statutorily required to respond to the TWDB surveys, the offense for not completing the survey is punished with a maximum $500 fine. The TWDB declined to disclose how many penalties have been served to the violators.
Texas is highly susceptible to droughts, making data collection that reflects historical water usage important to ensure water and resources are properly and responsibly allocated, especially during common drought conditions.
Data centers are notorious for large amounts of water usage.
Recently, data center companies such as CyrusOne have increasingly used closed-loop systems to help conserve water usage. In its sustainability report, CyrusOne explains that the system works by filling up the building stores one time, then the water is recycled for the lifetime of the building.
The TWDB “[does] not collect data on cooling system types and have only limited information regarding cooling types,” said Woodrome. “As a result, we are unable to determine the amount of water used in closed-loop systems.”
According to Nixon Peabody, a national legal consulting firm, some data center companies consider the type of cooling system used in their facilities to be proprietary information and a business secret, not subject to disclosure.
Cooling systems are not the only way water is consumed by data centers.
According to researchers, “most, but not all” electricity generation from coal, natural gas, and nuclear sources—which accounted for 70 percent of Texas’ electricity in 2024—requires water consumption through evaporation during cooling processes.
In a recent report, researchers found the national average of indirect water consumption for data centers in 2023 was 4.52 liters per kilowatt hour (kWh), compared with the average American water intensity factor for electricity usage of 4.35 liters per kWh. The International Energy Agency estimates the annual power demand of a large data center is 100 MW.
That’s roughly 452,000 liters of water per year from energy alone for a single data center, based on these estimations.
In supplemental information provided by the TWDB to Texas Scorecard, the board pointed out “the water demands associated with the long-term power demands related to data centers will remain difficult to project for many reasons,” one of which is “the variety of power sources that require varying amounts of water.”
Woodrome stated that the agency is working to improve water usage data collection policies by reclassifying the data centers from the municipal category to the manufacturing category for the survey. This change, she said, will “enable more explicit monitoring of water use trends within the data center sector as it continues to grow.”
Woodrome also wrote that the TWDB will “update the survey annually to include newly identified sites.”
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