UN Report Highlights AI Data Centers' Massive Water and Energy Use

A United Nations Institute report released in June 2026 warns that artificial‑intelligence data centers are creating a growing environmental burden. In 2025 they consumed 4.5 billion litres of water – enough to fill about 1.8 million Olympic‑size pools – and 448 terawatt‑hours (TWh) of electricity, placing the sector ninth worldwide in power use. The carbon footprint reached 189 million tonnes of CO₂‑equivalent, which would require roughly 3.2 billion tree‑plantings over ten years to offset.

The study notes that AI workloads accounted for roughly 20 % of data‑center electricity in 2025 and could rise to 40 % by 2030. Most of the energy demand comes from the inference phase, responsible for 80‑90 % of AI’s total power consumption. Services such as ChatGPT process about 2.5 billion queries daily, each using roughly 200 times more energy than a simple spam‑filter task. Generating AI‑created videos is identified as the next major energy drain.

Projected impacts include a water‑use surge to 9.3 billion litres and e‑waste generation up to 2.5 million tonnes per year by 2030, comparable to discarding nearly 250 Eiffel‑tower‑sized structures annually. The report also foresees the AI market expanding from $189 billion in 2023 to nearly $5 trillion by 2033, amplifying these environmental pressures.