India: Data Centers Boom as Water Supply Runs Low

In India, the demand for data centers is growing rapidly, with residents in areas like Khora facing severe water shortages. Residents of Khora have been struggling with a lack of reliable water supply for the past decade. Deepak Joshi, president of the Khora Residents Association, explains that residents have to dig up to 1,200 feet to extract water from the groundwater.

The city of Ghaziabad, where Khora is located, is a hotspot for data center development due to its abundant water sources, according to Ranjana Ray Chaudhuri, head of the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences at TERI University. However, rapid urbanization has changed the situation, and now the region must support data centers, which require substantial cooling and generate heat that can affect local microclimates.

Despite this, authorities have cancelled a project to reroute Ganges water directly to Khora, and residents are left without updates on an alternative solution. AdaniConnex, a data center operated by the Adani Group, is one of many facilities in Noida, which faces particularly high water stress due to rapid urbanization and groundwater depletion.

India's data center capacity has quadrupled in the past five years, and water consumption is estimated to double by 2030. Transparency on water usage by data centers in India is lacking, with no mandatory reporting or monitoring requirements in place.