Much of the world’s data are stored, managed, and distributed by data centers. Data centers require a tremendous amount of energy to operate, accounting for around 1.8% of electricity use in the United States. Large amounts of water are also required to operate data centers, both directly for liquid cooling and indirectly to produce electricity. For the first time, we calculate spatially-detailed carbon and water footprints of data centers operating within the United States, which is home to around one-quarter of all data center servers globally. Our bottom-up approach reveals one-fifth of data center servers direct water footprint comes from moderately to highly water stressed watersheds, while nearly half of servers are fully or partially powered by power plants located within water stressed regions. Approximately 0.5% of total US greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to data centers. We investigate tradeoffs and synergies between data center’s water and energy utilization by strategically locating data centers in areas of the country that will minimize one or more environmental footprints. Our study quantifies the environmental implications behind our data creation and storage and shows a path to decrease the environmental footprint of our increasing digital footprint.

世界上的大部分数据都由数据中心存储、管理和分发。数据中心需要大量能源才能运行，约占美国用电量的 1.8%。运行数据中心也需要大量的水，直接用于液体冷却和间接用于发电。我们首次计算在美国运营的数据中心的空间详细碳足迹和水足迹，美国拥有全球大约四分之一的数据中心服务器。我们自下而上的方法表明，五分之一的数据中心服务器直接水足迹来自中度至高度缺水的流域，而近一半的服务器完全或部分由位于缺水地区的发电厂供电。大约 0。美国温室气体排放总量的 5% 归因于数据中心。我们通过战略性地将数据中心定位在能够最大限度减少一个或多个环境足迹的国家地区，研究数据中心的水和能源利用之间的权衡和协同作用。我们的研究量化了我们的数据创建和存储背后的环境影响，并展示了减少我们不断增加的数字足迹所带来的环境足迹的途径。