Do Golf Courses Really Use More Water Than Data Centres? - MRKT3.0

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Disinformation, Ethical AI Policy & Analysis

Do Golf Courses Really Use More Water Than Data Centres?

Grace Sharp

August 24, 2026

Takeaways

US golf courses still use far more water than data centres on a direct basis: roughly 1.45 billion gallons a day versus about 17 billion gallons a year for all US data centres combined (≈30×).<br>That comparison leaves out the much larger volume of water used to generate the electricity the centres consume (around 211 billion gallons in 2023).<br>Direct data-centre water use is rising quickly and is projected to reach 38–73 billion gallons by 2028. Once indirect water is included, the overall gap with golf narrows significantly and could close later this decade.

The case against AI keeps getting longer and more specific. Recently, one of the loudest complaints is the water and energy appetite of the data centres the whole build-out depends on.<br>A Gallup poll this spring found more Americans would oppose a data centre near their home than a nuclear power plant, 71% to 53%. Half the opponents pointed first to the strain on resources, water and energy above all.<br>The AI industry heard these grievances, went looking for a rebuttal, and found one in the golf course. The comparison turns up every few weeks, usually on X: golf courses use more water than data centres, therefore the panic is overblown.<br>“But the data centers utilize so much water”

The Internet is literally undefeated when it comes to being uninformed. 🥲 pic.twitter.com/LHHWvLnvAo<br>— Daniel Newman (@danielnewmanUV) August 22, 2026

Investor and Shark Tank regular Kevin O’Leary has been making the same case in interviews, arguing that his own enormous data-centre project sips less than the fairways do. In Google’s own environmental report, the company measures its 2023 water footprint as roughly 41 golf courses’ worth. This figure is based on the higher average water use of courses in the southwestern United States, which makes the comparison more favourable to Google.<br>So does the golf comparison settle the water question, or is there more to it? Let’s investigate.<br>Golf Course vs Data Centre: Which One Uses More Water?<br>American golf courses do use more water than data centres, and the numbers are not especially close. The industry’s own survey found US courses applied about 531 billion gallons in 2024, roughly 1.45 billion a day. The most authoritative federal estimate, a 2024 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, puts direct water use across every US data centre at about 17.4 billion gallons for all of 2023. Line them up and golf outdrinks the servers by something similar to thirty-to-one.<br>The figure that usually does the rounds is the older one, 2.08 billion gallons a day, drawn from a survey run two decades ago before golf cut its water use by nearly a third. Reaching for the biggest golf number and the smallest data-centre one is a deliberate choice, and it always points the same way. Still, the gap is real. Golf is spectacularly thirsty, attracts almost no protest, and often draws its water in the driest places anyone thought to build a course.<br>So What Is the Stat Leaving Out?<br>That 17.4 billion gallons covers only the water moving through the cooling systems. It leaves out the much larger volume used to generate the electricity those centres run on. The same Berkeley report estimates another 211 billion gallons went into power production in 2023, roughly twelve times the direct figure. Once you fold that in, golf’s lead shrinks from thirty-to-one to something nearer two-to-one. The version that circulates online shows just a snippet of the whole picture.<br>Direction of travel also matters more than the current snapshot. Golf’s water use is flat or falling as courses switch to recycled water and more resilient grasses. Data-centre demand is climbing fast. Berkeley expects direct use alone to reach somewhere between 38 and 73 billion gallons by 2028, and several analyses now put the two lines crossing around that time.<br>And then we have to look at national averages, because most of the environmental arguments against data centres are local. Nobody drinks from a national average; they drink from a particular aquifer. O’Leary’s project sits beside the shrinking Great Salt Lake, and Utah Clean Energy estimates that single site could use between 2 and 16.6 billion gallons a year. One facility at the high end of that range approaches the direct water use of every data centre in America combined. In Spain, Amazon’s plans in drought-hit Aragón have set local farmers against the servers over who gets first call on the water. In the Netherlands, a Microsoft site turned out to have used 84 million litres in a year after indicating it would use a fifth of that. Those communities are not especially comforted by the existence of a thirsty course in Arizona.<br>The political response has been more enthusiastic than the local one. President...