Water use by sector
Who uses water and for what, with withdrawal and consumption distinguished throughout.
By far the largest water user in the world, accounting for roughly 70% of global freshwater withdrawal and a substantially higher share of consumption. Almost all discussion of "saving wat…
Data centres use water principally for cooling. Their water use has become prominent because facilities are large, individually visible, and often sited in water-stressed regions for reaso…
Domestic water use is a small share of national withdrawal in most countries — commonly under 15% — but it is the use people see, it must be treated to drinking standard, and it is deliver…
AI training and inference concentrate very high power density in individual facilities, which increases cooling demand. Published per-query water figures circulate widely and almost always…
Thermal power generation is the largest industrial water withdrawer in most developed economies, and the clearest case where withdrawal and consumption must not be confused.
Industrial water use spans processes with entirely different profiles, from steel and paper, which use very large volumes largely for cooling and return most of it, to semiconductor fabric…
The application of water to crops to supplement rainfall. Around 20% of cultivated land is irrigated, and that land produces roughly 40% of global food output.
Chip fabrication requires ultrapure water for wafer rinsing — water so pure it is aggressive, with resistivity around 18.2 MΩ·cm and essentially no dissolved anything. Producing it is itse…
Mining uses water for ore processing, dust suppression and tailings transport. Its principal water significance is often quality rather than quantity: acid mine drainage can contaminate ca…
Direct drinking and servicing water for animals is modest. The dominant water use associated with livestock is the feed they eat, which is accounted for in the footprint layer rather than …
Uses water as ingredient, for cleaning and for cooling, at drinking quality throughout. Cleaning-in-place typically dominates volume.
Hydropower does not consume water in the direct sense — it passes water through turbines and returns it. Its water impact is evaporation from reservoir surfaces and alteration of the flow …
Dyeing and finishing are among the most water-intensive and most polluting industrial processes, and are concentrated in countries where effluent regulation is often weakly enforced.
Historically one of the largest industrial water users. Modern mills recirculate heavily, reducing withdrawal per tonne by an order of magnitude compared with mid-twentieth-century practice.