Big Tech's water usage has risen by 60% since 2020

As Earth Day reminds us of the urgent need to protect our planet’s resources, it's worth examining how Big Tech’s AI ambitions impact the environment. Companies like Meta, Apple, Microsoft, and Google use increasing amounts of water to support energy demands. Today, we take a look at how much water these four companies have used over the past four years and what they are doing to address their environmental impact.

Key insights

• In 2023, Google consumed the most water out of the four companies, leading the yearly water consumption with over 24 million cubic meters used. This is over 9,600 Olympic pools each year, or about 26 each day. For comparison, over their lifetime, a person should drink an average of 52 cubic meters of water (approximately 2% of an Olympic pool), meaning Google in one day uses the equivalent of what 1,300 people would consume in their entire lifetimes.
• The other companies used less water than Google. For example, Microsoft used 7.8 million cubic meters in 2023 (nearly 9 Olympic pools each day), and Apple reported over 6 million cubic meters of water consumed (nearly 7 Olympic pools daily).
• The company using the least amount of water was Meta, with over 3 million cubic meters consumed in 2023 — around 3 and a half Olympic pools every day. While this is roughly ⅛ of Google’s daily figure, it still equals the annual water consumption of approximately 7,423 average American households.
• These four Big Tech companies have used a total of 132,344,557 cubic meters of water this decade so far, enough to fill 52,938 Olympic swimming pools, or about 36 every single day from 2020 to 2023.
• In 2023, the record year, they consumed over 41 million cubic meters of water, or about 112,500 cubic meters per day. That’s enough to fill 45 Olympic-sized swimming pools or roughly three-quarters of an average NFL stadium. This marks a 61% increase from 2020, when the companies used 25 million cubic meters, equivalent to around 28 pools per day.
• Google accounts for about 59% of the total yearly volume among the four companies, with Microsoft, Apple, and Meta accounting for 19%, 15%, and 7% of the total yearly volume, respectively.
• The biggest jump from 2020 to 2023 was recorded by Microsoft, whose yearly water consumption increased by 87%. Google’s consumption also experienced a massive increase of 69%, whereas Meta recorded a 40% increase, and Apple a more modest 25%.
• Meta aims to be water positive by 2030, planning to restore over 7.2 billion liters annually through water projects. Microsoft doubled its replenishment efforts in 2023 and met its goal to provide clean water access to 1.5 million people. Apple reported a 42% water reuse rate through its supplier program. Google supported 74 water programs and plans to replenish 120% of its freshwater use by 2030.

Methodology and sources

The data was collected from environmental and sustainability reports by Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Apple, all published in 2024 and publicly available through their websites. Our study covers the period from 2020 to 2023, the latter corresponding to the latest available data. Water consumption refers to water withdrawal minus water discharged, therefore representing the water removed from the immediate environment. We refer to water consumption as “use” or “usage” throughout this research.

Figures in US gallons were converted using the following rate of 1 US gallon to 0.003785411784 cubic meters. To estimate the number of Olympic swimming pools, we first calculated the daily water consumption by dividing the reported yearly water consumption by the number of days of each year, considering 2020 was a leap year (366 days). For the Olympic swimming pool volume, we considered 2,500,000 liters of water (2,500 cubic meters), assuming a nominal depth of 2 meters, as defined by the international federation recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), World Aquatics ¹.

For lifetime water consumption by an individual, we assumed an average intake of 2 liters of water per day (as recommended by the European Food Safety Authority ²) over a lifetime of 71 years (WHO global life expectancy ³) or around 25,932 days. This represents a total of 51,864 liters, or around 52 cubic meters — about 2% of an Olympic swimming pool. That said, the amount of water consumed by a person over a lifetime varies based on factors such as climate, lifestyle, diet, and overall health. The average American family uses over 300 US gallons of water each day ⁴, corresponding to 1.136 cubic meters each day or a yearly figure of 415 cubic meters.

For the NFL stadium capacity, we considered a typical stadium that is 100 meters long, 50 meters wide, and 30 meters high, with a total volume of 150,000 cubic meters.

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