The great American data center divide

But industry executives argue that the trade-off between water and energy is often misunderstood. Doug Adams of NTT Global Data Centers, the world’s third-largest data center operator, says closed-loop systems can reduce overall energy demand. “It’s more costly to build up front, but in the long run it’s more efficient to use [coolant] to evacuate heat,” he says. OpenAI chief Sam Altman—whose start-up has committed to spend $600 billion on infrastructure by the end of 2030, according to people familiar with the matter—recently bristled at the suggestion that data centers consume huge amounts of water. Appearing at the India AI summit in February, he said that concerns about AI’s water consumption were “totally fake,” arguing that evaporative cooling was a problem of the past. Yet the sheer scale of the projects planned for the next five years by hyperscalers and others means that water consumption is expected to surge. Compounding fears is a suspicion that AI facilities are driving up energy prices. On average, American bill payers—including residential, commercial, and industrial customers—paid over 6 percent more for electricity year on year at the end of 2025. This increase was starkly higher in the mid-Atlantic states that house a large number of data centers, such as Pennsylvania and Virginia, where bills rose by 19 and 10 percent, respectively. …