A comprehensive report published by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health has revealed that global data centers consumed 448 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2025, a figure that would rank them as the world's 11th-largest electricity consumer, roughly on par with the entire nation of France. The report, titled Environmental Cost of AI's Energy Use: Carbon, Water and Land Footprints, provides the most detailed assessment to date of the environmental toll exacted by the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence infrastructure worldwide.
The study found that AI-specific workloads accounted for approximately 20 percent of total data center electricity consumption in 2025, a share that researchers project will double to 40 percent by 2030. Looking ahead, the report warns that total data center electricity consumption could reach 945 terawatt-hours by the end of the decade, representing nearly 3 percent of global electricity demand. Such growth would place enormous strain on existing power grids and could undermine international climate commitments unless accompanied by massive investments in renewable energy generation.
Beyond electricity consumption, the report documents the staggering water footprint of global data center operations. Cooling systems for these facilities consumed approximately 4.5 trillion liters of water in 2025, a volume sufficient to meet the basic water needs of more than 600 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa. The water-intensive nature of data center cooling has already sparked conflicts in several regions where facilities compete with agricultural and residential water users for increasingly scarce freshwater resources.
The carbon emissions associated with data center operations reached 189 million metric tons of CO2 in 2025, according to the UN findings. Projections indicate this figure could more than double to 400 million metric tons by 2030, a level comparable to the total annual carbon emissions of the United Kingdom. The report notes that by 2030, the electricity consumed by data centers could have alternatively provided power to 1.3 billion people in Sub-Saharan Africa for more than five years, highlighting the stark disparity between technology sector resource consumption and global development needs.
The authors of the report call for urgent governance frameworks to manage the environmental footprint of artificial intelligence. They argue that current voluntary commitments by technology companies are insufficient to address the scale of the problem and that binding international standards are needed to ensure that AI development does not come at an unacceptable environmental cost. The report recommends mandatory environmental impact assessments for new data center construction, efficiency standards for cooling systems, and requirements for renewable energy procurement.
The findings come amid an unprecedented global boom in data center construction, driven primarily by demand from large technology companies racing to build infrastructure for generative AI services. Industry analysts estimate that hundreds of billions of dollars in new data center investments are currently planned or under construction worldwide, with major facilities being developed across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Environmental advocates have seized on the UN report as evidence that the AI industry requires far more rigorous environmental regulation than it currently faces.
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