\u201cAI may seem intangible, but the infrastructure around it is anything but,\u201d Anna Meres of Greenpeace told BIRN. \u201cBehind every AI application are server halls, cooling systems, electricity grids, water consumption and chip manufacturing. AI depends on physical resources that we all share.\u201d<\/p>\n
Globally, data centres consumed 448 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, according<\/a> to the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health. Had these centres been a country, they would have ranked 11th worldwide for electricity consumption.<\/p>\n \u201cEnergy is the key raw material for the data-centre sector,\u201d Pyplacz said.<\/p>\n Poland\u2019s own projections also suggest that the issue will soon become impossible to ignore. According to the state transmission system operator PSE<\/a>, electricity demand from data centres is expected to rise from just 0.6 TWh in 2024 to 29.4 TWh by 2040, equal to more than one in every ten units of electricity consumed in Poland that year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe key question is what will meet that demand,\u201d Meres said. \u201cWill data centres accelerate investment in renewable energy, storage and grids \u2013 or become another argument for burning fossil fuels?\u201d<\/p>\n While electricity dominates discussions about the costs of AI, water receives far less attention. The EU is building its own reporting system for data-centre water and energy use as it moves to triple its bloc-wide capacity by 2035, but in Poland nobody can say with certainty how much water the sector currently consumes.<\/p>\n The state water authority, Polish Waters, does not track data centres as a separate category of water user. Nor does Poland publish aggregated figures showing the sector\u2019s overall environmental footprint.<\/p>\n Pyplacz argues that fears about data centres\u2019 water use are often shaped by the US experience, which does not translate neatly to Europe. Thanks to cooler climates and widespread use of dry cooling, PLDCA estimates the sector accounts for only about 0.01 per cent of total EU water consumption.<\/p>\n But Agata Szafraniuk, who heads the environmental law charity ClientEarth Poland, said the existing rules haven\u2019t been adapted to what data centres actually do.<\/p>\n Their \u201cclassic\u201d impacts \u2013 noise, air emissions \u2013 tend to be modest, she told BIRN. What\u2019s harder to capture is their indirect footprint: strain on local power grids and water supplies and the knock-on effect of driving up output at other facilities responsible for those classic impacts in the first place. \u201cThe question is whether environmental assessments of data centres actually account for all of that,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The lack of data reflects a broader regulatory gap. Current planning law<\/a> treats data centres largely as ordinary industrial or commercial developments, even though their demands on electricity networks and water resources differ significantly from traditional factories or warehouses.<\/p>\n That gap arrives at an uncomfortable moment. During the massive hydrological drought of 2025, the Vistula, Poland\u2019s largest river, broke all-time records for the lowest water levels since measurements began. At the Warsaw-Bulwary gauge, the water level dropped to just 5 centimetres in September, exposing historical artefacts that had been hidden underwater for centuries.<\/p>\n