Google uses 43 golf courses of water

And a comment on Up Wing vs Down Wing arguments

A correspondent points out that I buried the lede on data center water use.

Google’s most recent sustainability report compares its global data center water use to golf courses. Here’s how they put it:

In 2023, the total water consumption at our data centers and offices was 6.4 billion gallons (approximately 24 billion liters or 24 million cubic meters)—equivalent to the annual irrigation needs of 43 golf courses on average in the southwestern United States.

This marks a 14% increase from 2022, driven primarily by water cooling needs at our data centers, which saw year-over-year growth in electricity consumption.

To get this, Google takes a number from the United States Golf Association that golf courses (in the American southwest) use 150 million gallons of water each year.¹

You could question the 6.4 billion gallon number by pointing out that it uses water consumption, which is lower than Google’s withdrawals. At about 8.7 billion gallons, that is still only 58 golf courses of water.

With almost 16,000 golf courses in the US, according to the National Golf Foundation, those 58 courses represent a sliver of water use.

Data center water use with some comparisons

These kinds of comparisons are useful because, unless you’re a water rights expert or manage irrigation shares with your neighbors, most of the numbers sound big and scary. We’re talking about billions, after all. So, making them relatable can be a challenge.

One lesson from this you shouldn’t take is the Down Wing argument. That is, calls to ban golf courses are likely as misplaced as calls to ban data centers. Up Wing vs Down Wing comes from James Pethokoukis. He puts the Up Wing and Down Wing differentiation like this:

Rather, the key divide that has always been most critical in shaping our everyday lives, our nation, and our world is Up Wing versus Down Wing.

The core claim of Up Wing thinking is this: A vibrant and resilient society is one with a firm belief that tomorrow can be better than today — that is, if we choose to make it so. An Up Wing society is a “no pain, no gain” society. It accepts the necessity of change, although sometimes really uncomfortable, as it strives to generate fast economic growth through scientific discovery, technological invention, commercial innovation, and high-impact entrepreneurship.

In comparison, Down Wingers think that “stagnation is an immutable fact of American life” and see today's problems in a zero-sum fashion. With water, the Down Wing conversations dominate. Just take this conversation about water use on the /r/golf subreddit. The framing is a worry about golf courses being banned for their water use. But the reaction of the Reddit golfers is to throw agricultural water users under the bus. That’s a zero-sum approach to water use.

In comparison, Up Wing approaches might be more like those of Utah’s recent adaptations to its water rights laws. The legal change allowed conservation uses to count as beneficial uses—essentially, it enables those who own water to choose to conserve it without fear of losing a claim on that water.

The challenge with water use debates is they often devolve into finger-pointing and zero-sum thinking. But the Up Wing perspective shows us a better way. Rather than banning data centers, golf courses, or data center operations and golfers ganging up on agriculture, we can embrace innovation, collaboration, and reform to ensure everyone has enough. Water users of all types are more likely to come to the table for productive conversations if we frame the topic like this instead of blaming a subset of water users.

The future isn’t about shrinking our ambitions to match limited resources—it’s about expanding what’s possible with the resources we have.

1. This, in turn, assumes 459 acre-feet in southwestern golf courses, 325,851 gallons per acre-foot, for a total of 149,917,509 gallons (which is then rounded to 150 million for simplicity).