IRELAND\u2019S LARGEST DATA centres used close to one billion litres of water last year, a new investigation by The Journal Investigates has found.<\/p>\n
The figures provided to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and analysed by our team show how much water each data centre campus has used since 2024.<\/p>\n
In total, at least 1.7 billion litres of water have been used by data centres from the public supply over the past two years.<\/p>\n
More than half of this \u2013 999 million litres \u2013 was used last year, though the vast majority of this can also be attributed to just two data centre campuses.<\/p>\n
The amount used by data centres last year is enough water to fill 400 Olympic-sized swimming pools, or the equivalent of approximately 20,500 people\u2019s annual water use \u2013 roughly the population of Sligo Town.<\/p>\n
Only the largest data centres are required to report this information to the EPA each year, meaning that the true figures of data centre water use are likely higher, but the figures do provide a glimpse at how much individual campuses use.<\/p>\n
The Journal has previously reported that the opaque nature of the industry<\/a> and lobbying efforts from tech companies to keep it that way mean that there is limited environmental information on the impact of data centres publicly available.<\/p>\n A government study from 2022 suggested that data centres used roughly 810 million litres of water a year.<\/p>\n And as reported by The Irish Independent, figures provided by Uisce \u00c9ireann to Labour TD Ciar\u00e1n Ahern show that the 57 data centres identified by the utility use a total of 4.78 million litres of water a day on average.<\/p>\n The persistent hot weather and the national hosepipe ban imposed by Uisce \u00c9ireann have led to questions about how much water data centres are using.<\/p>\n But our investigation shows that while huge quantities of water are being used by data centres every year, the figures pale in comparison to other sectors of the economy, namely the pharmaceutical industry.\n<\/p>\n Investigations like this don\u2019t happen without your support\u2026 Impactful investigative reporting is powered by people like you.<\/strong><\/p>\n Data centres use millions of litres every year<\/p>\n At least 1.7 billion litres of water has been used by data centres connected to the public water supply since 2024, according to figures examined by our team.<\/p>\n The amount of water used has increased year-on-year, with it rising from 752 million litres in 2024 to over 999 million litres in 2025.<\/p>\n But the overwhelming majority of this can be attributed to just two data centre campuses \u2013 Meta\u2019s campus in Clonee, Co Meath and Equinix\u2019s campus in Dublin.<\/p>\n These two campuses used over 954 million litres of water between them last year \u2013 556 million litres for Meta\u2019s campus and 398 million litres for Equinix\u2019s campus.<\/p>\n Equinix also used more than a million litres of recycled water during the year.<\/p>\n The remaining 44 million litres came from data centre campuses run by Amazon, Google and Microsoft.<\/p>\n For most other data centre campuses, their water use ranged between 1-4 million litres last year.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Meta declined to comment on the company\u2019s water use, while a spokesperson for Equinix did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n The vast majority of these data centres are located in the Greater Dublin area, with only Meta\u2019s campus and an Amazon data centre on the border of Meath and Louth in Drogheda located outside the capital.<\/p>\n In a statement issued last week, Uisce \u00c9ireann said \u201cdata centres are not a major driver of demand on the public water supply network, accounting for less than 0.3% of the water supplied.\u201d<\/p>\n They added that \u201cmodern data centres use relatively small volumes of water\u201d and that \u201cnot all data centres use water from the Uisce \u00c9ireann network.\u201d<\/p>\n While some data centres analysed by our team did occasionally use recycled or harvested rainwater, all were connected to the public water supply and sourced the vast majority of their water from this.<\/p>\n Still not the full picture<\/p>\n An analysis by our team shows that 48 data centres are included in these figures and relate to the largest data centres in Ireland.<\/p>\n The figures provided to Ahern by Uisce \u00c9ireann cover 57 data centres, but do not provide any information per campus.<\/p>\n Both sets of figures are also not the full picture of data centre water use, though the largest users are likely accounted for.<\/p>\n The Journal Investigates previously found 89 data centres believed to be operational<\/a>, though this figure is almost certainly higher now.<\/p>\n Our team has also previously reported how the European Commission has collected key metrics like energy efficiency and water consumption from data centres since 2024.<\/p>\n