Global Data Center Water Use and Scarcity Analysis

Published July 14, 2026 | Version v3

Dataset Restricted

Repository Structure

2_energy_and_water_use/: Contains reference data for energy and water calculations

Power plant databases: Data is from the WRI global power plant database version 1.30 (Byers et al., 2018; download [here]
Electricity grid maps: Power grid geojson from here
Climate zone data: Köppen climate zone 1991-2020 tif from Beck et al., 2023
Power plant water intensity: Based off of Jin et al., 2019
PUE and WUE scenario definitions: Derived from Lei & Masanet, 2022

3_water_scarcity: PCR-GLOBWB model outputs for water scarcity analysis, from Barbarossa et al., 2021

*Note*: inputs are not included in downloads due to their size (30 GB). The dataset can be found through the publication above.

4_figures: Basin data for visualization, based on Pfafstetter watershed sub-basin level 5, from HydroBASINS

common: Country boundaries from Natural Earth Data

0_webscraping: Raw data collected from data center directories

1_data_etl: Processed and cleaned data center information

Geocoded data center locations
Pre- and post-manual editing versions
Fuzzy matching results
Merging data sources
Multiple imputation scenarios (min, max, average, baseline) for Big Tech companies

2_energy_and_water_use: Calculated energy and water use of data centers globally

3_water_scarcity: Water scarcity analysis results

Data center water extraction location mappings
PCR-GLOBWB extracted values for discharge and abstraction
Water scarcity summaries for different climate scenarios (1.5°C, 2.0°C, 3.2°C) at data center locations
Water scarcity increases from data-center-driven water use

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