These are the countries which have officially built the most data centers
and the ones where people are getting concerned about water consumption the most

Date:
Tue, 06 Oct 2026 18:05:00 +0000

Description:
The US, Russia, and the UK have the most data centers, while a quarter of countries with the highest growth have extremely high water stress.

FULL STORY
The expansion of data centers over the past three years
has revealed that while the US is leading the growth,
the environmental impact is actually more widely felt, with water
stress being felt in smaller nations, too.

Although the US has built an amazing 127 data centers since 2023 which is 10 times more than any other country Russia has built 77 (44% growth) and the
UK has expanded by 58 (up 12%). But while the US has 5,427 data centers, Russias impact is tiny, with 251 representing just under 5% of the same output. Water stress is largely impacted on areas where water is already in short supply, but a new study has shown that areas including the famously
damp Belgium are impacted. Much of the opposition to data centers has concerned the environmental impact, particularly on water stress.

What is water stress?

Comparitechs study refers to the World Resources Institutes definition of water stress, which tells us that a country using more than 80% of its entire available water supply is under water stress. This is scored in Comparitechs report, with low water stress rated 1.0, and extremely high rated 4-5.

The results show that Chile (4.5) and Belgium (4.4) have the highest stress
on the water supply, with the US on 2.6 and UK on 1.3. However, the damper, temperate zone of Belgium seems to be building itself into data center-shaped water stress problem.

The small European country established 12 new facilities since 2023, which suggests it has gone as far as it can while data centers are demanding up to five million gallons of water a day.

Strategic assets

While the research from Comparitech emphasizes the impact of
AI data center growth on the water supply, it also highlights another key consequence of their existence. In March 2026, Iran launched Shahed drone strikes on AWS sites in the United Arab Emirates.

Data centers are now strategic targets, and their positioning in relation to each other (as well as residential areas and other industries) could
determine how conflicts unfold in future. The report notes:

This kind of clustering brings clear efficiency advantages for power and connectivity, but it also concentrates risk: strained local resources, single points of failure, and as facilities become more central to national economies and AI infrastructure more attractive targets.

The damage to AWS facilities in the UAE and Bahrain during the 2026 US/Iran conflict, as well as the Russian attacks on a data center in Kyiv, demonstrates how data centers are increasingly treated as strategic assets rather than just commercial ones.

As data centers continue the trend of clustering into denser digital hubs, this is a risk that will continue to grow.

Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/these-are-the-countries-which-have-officially-bu ilt-the-most-data-centers-and-the-ones-where-people-are-getting-concerned-abou t-water-consumption-the-most

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