Long an afterthought in serious discussions of policy, economics, or business, water has begun to infiltrate the boardroom. It’s not simply that billions of people still lack access to clean water and sanitation, though this has long been true. What is different now is that today’s leaders are facing an unprecedented array of external disruptions that require new solutions—and success increasingly depends on our ability to manage water more sustainably than ever before.
Take geopolitics. Tensions in the Asia-Pacific region and legislation such as the ‘CHIPS Act’ are spurring demands to re-shore industrial activity in the United States, especially in strategic sectors such as semiconductor manufacturing. Making microchips is water-intensive; a large plant can use 10 million gallons of water a day—the same consumption as 300,000 households. In Taiwan, the global capital of semiconductor manufacturing, a massive drought recently threatened to cripple the country’s microchip plants, and leaders had to resort to truck in water to keep production flowing. Now, semiconductor companies like Intel and TSMC are building massive new plants in states like Arizona that have well-developed supply chains and a strong base of skilled workers, but also face serious water supply challenges, including a persistent drought impacting the Colorado River. Reshoring in other sectors – including pharmaceuticals and broader industrial manufacturing – will similarly increase demand for water across regions.
Or take artificial intelligence. At launch, ChatGPT captured the public imagination and became the fastest-growing consumer technology in history, spawning competitors and ever more sophisticated and data-intensive services. But the cloud behind ChatGPT is very thirsty. It depends on a vast network of data centers cooled by water¸—so much water that every 20 to 50 questions require ChatGPT to “drink” the equivalent of a 16.9oz water bottle. Ever greater volumes of data are already causing the water footprint of companies like Microsoft and Google to grow at double digits, with Google’s data centers in the US alone consuming 3.3 billion gallons of water in 2021.