The Google data center complex that’s coming to Botetourt County would start off as its sixth largest in the country and eighth largest in the world, according to data in the company’s recent 2026 environmental report.
That’s based on Google’s figures for water use for each of its data center locations. The Botetourt site is contracted for 2 million gallons of water per day, or 730 million gallons per year. According to the Google report, that would put it behind seven other Google sites:
Council Bluffs, Iowa (1,746.4 million gallons)
Winschoten, Netherlands (1,401.2 million gallons)
Mayes County, Oklahoma (1,396.7 million gallons)
Eemshaven, Netherlands (1,060.8 million gallons)
New Albany, Ohio (1,008.1 million gallons)
Berkeley County, South Carolina (999.5 million gallons)
Douglas County, Georgia (834.9 million gallons)
Google has said that someday it might like to expand in Botetourt County to a size that, at current water use rates, would require 8 million gallons per day or 2.92 billion gallons a year, which would make it the company’s largest in the world (assuming these other sites don’t expand).
I prefer to use the 2 million-a-day figure because that’s all that’s been contracted for now; anything above that seems speculative and subject to economic or technological changes we can’t predict. However, even that figure, when compared to the water usage at other Google data centers, helps us understand the size of the project coming to Botetourt.
(Disclosure: Google is one of our donors through its Google News Initiative, which helped support our expansion in the New River Valley. Donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy. You can be a donor and have no say, as well, by becoming a Cardinal member.)
Water use, rather than electricity use, has been the rallying point for Google opponents in Botetourt. Water use across the country has fallen, due to the introduction of more water-efficient appliances. Google could take that contracted 2 million gallons per day amount now, and the Roanoke Valley would still be using less water than it did 20 years ago (see those figures here). If Google does someday need that 8 million gallons per day (and other water use rates don’t change), then the Roanoke Valley would need to develop additional water sources, which I wrote about in a previous column. There are at least two ways to look at this. One is that the Roanoke Valley’s water supply is so plentiful that we can add a large data center complex and still use less water than we once did. Another is to wonder what kinds of opportunities we might foreclose if we dedicate that much water to a single user.
Google presently has four other locations in Virginia. In terms of water use, the Botetourt site would be larger than the two next biggest combined.
Bristow 359.6 million gallons
Sterling 258.4 million gallons
Leesburg 238.1 million gallons
Ashburn 76.5 million gallons
All these figures come from Google’s 117-page annual environmental report, which offers fascinating insight into how one of the world’s largest technology companies is working to reduce its environmental impact at the same time that artificial intelligence is driving its growth. “Google’s electricity, water use and greenhouse gas emissions all climbed to record levels last year as the company raced to build more AI infrastructure,” Axios reported in its summary of the report. “Google has invested more aggressively than perhaps any other tech company in clean energy, yet its environmental report … shows how difficult it has become to keep climate goals on track amid the AI buildout.”
For instance: Greenhouse gas emissions are up 18%, “the largest annual increase Google has reported, driven largely by manufacturing AI hardware, including chips and servers,” Axios reported. Electricity demand is up 37%, making it 3.5 times more than in 2019. Water use is up 34%, “more than double 2021 levels,” Axios says.
All this comes despite increased efforts by Google and other tech companies to reduce their environmental footprints, something complicated by the AI boom.
While the water figures above represent what the company drew from water sources, Google touts how in 2025 it “replenished approximately 7.7 billion gallons of water — roughly 78% of our 2025 freshwater consumption, marking progress toward our 120% replenishment ambition.” Google says by replenishment, it means adding water to water systems through “stewardship programs” that can involve fixing leaks (water systems typically lose a lot of water through leaks; the Roanoke Valley loses about 27% of its water through leaks), restoring marshlands or using technology to optimize irrigation so it’s done at the best time.
That 78% figure is up from 64% the year before, which highlights the challenge: Google did a better job replacing water but, because of growth, used more water than before. The amount of water it replenished nearly doubled, but the percentage didn’t because the amounts keep getting bigger.
Google does provide some fascinating comparisons to put its water use in context. Among them: “The aggregate water consumption of data centers is actually fairly small — U.S. data centers use less than 1% of the water that Americans use on their lawns annually.”
When Google lists the water usage at its data centers, it converts that into golf courses, since golf courses are also big users of water. That Council Bluffs, Iowa, site — Google’s biggest — uses the same amount of water as nine golf courses. That math seems right. Fluence, a water engineering company, says the typical 18-hole golf course uses about 200 million gallons of water a year. Nine times that would be almost exactly the water use of Google’s Council Bluffs operation.
By that measure, Google’s Botetourt site would be equal to 3.65 golf courses. Thought experiment: Would there be the same level of controversy if a developer proposed to build 3.65 golf courses in the Roanoke Valley?
It is curious to me that water has become the focus point of protests against the Botetourt project and not energy, when we know that data centers are voraciously hungry for energy. The challenge with data centers — particularly in Virginia — is that they are driving up energy demand at the same time that the state’s major utilities are under a mandate to convert to non-carbon energy sources (with some exceptions). Either of those things would spur the development of new energy sources (such as solar facilities), but Virginia has both happening at the same time.
Google’s report details how it’s adding non-carbon energy, and the way it’s doing so is instructive. What follows is perhaps the harmonic convergence of stories: Google and NextEra are partnering to reopen a shuttered nuclear plant in Iowa to help supply the tech giant’s energy needs. NextEra is the Florida-based energy company that wants to merge with Dominion Energy. (Another disclosure: Dominion is also one of our donors; same rules about donors having no say apply.)
The Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa was that state’s only nuclear plant; it was decommissioned in 2020. Now Google and NextEra are working to reopen it in 2029, with a goal of providing what Google says is 600 megawatts of “always on” power.
This speaks to several trends at once: Nuclear energy is enjoying a renaissance, partly because many are seeing that as the only way to produce a lot of reliable power without pumping more carbon into the atmosphere. Tech companies, in particular, are starting to embrace nuclear. Amazon and Dominion are partnering to explore a small reactor — a “small modular reactor” is the industry lingo — at Dominion’s existing North Anna nuclear station. Microsoft has entered into a 20-year deal to buy power from the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. And now Google and NextEra are working to restart a shut-down nuclear plant in Iowa. Google has also agreed to buy power from what is billed as the world’s first nuclear fusion plant in Chesterfield County. (Traditional nuclear power works through fission.) “We’re making long-term bets on the frontier of energy,” Google says in its report.
Google is also buying the wind energy that will be produced at Apex Energy’s Rocky Forge site in Botetourt County — 79.3 megawatts.
Data centers require a lot of power, and those involved with AI need even more. Tech companies are working on how to reduce their water usage, but reducing power consumption is more difficult. Ultimately, it’s not tech companies that are causing all this demand; it’s the consumers who use them. Google’s report includes this assessment of how much power and water its Gemini AI tool uses: “We estimated that the median Gemini Apps text prompt uses 0.24 watt-hours of energy, emits 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide equivalent and consumes 0.26 milliliters (or about five drops) of water — figures that are substantially lower than many public estimates. The per-prompt energy impact is equivalent to watching TV for less than nine seconds.”
That sounds small, but lots of clicks add up. At these rates, there are 14,559 Gemini prompts in one gallon of water. At Google’s 2 million gallons a day in Botetourt, that would support 29.118 billion Gemini prompts. Google doesn’t disclose how many prompts Gemini gets each day, but a rival AI tool, ChatGPT, gets roughly 2.5 billion — and all these figures are growing every day. Every time we click something, be it AI or otherwise, we’re using electrons, carbon and water somewhere.
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