Global Data Center Water Use and Scarcity Analysis

Repository Structure

Data Organization

Inputs

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 processed files are included in outputs/3_water_scarcity which can be used to run the water scarcity analysis

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

common: Country boundaries from Natural Earth Data

Outputs

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

Imputed power capacity from floor area

Assigned power and water use efficiencies per data center 

Direct impact assessments

Assigned power grids to data centers

Indirect water use of data centers

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