A dried-up water tap in the Nogales community of La Esperanza, Mexico, near Microsoft's data centre in Queretaro, on July 31. As tech companies build data centres worldwide to advance artificial intelligence, vulnerable communities have been hit by blackouts and water shortages. Photo / Cesar Rodriguez, The New York Times
When Microsoft opened a data centre in central Mexico last year, nearby residents said power cuts became more frequent.
Water outages, which once lasted days, stretched for weeks.
The shortages led to school cancellations and the spread of stomach bugs in the town of Las Cenizas, said Dulce Maria Nicolas, a resident and mother-of-two. She has considered moving.
Victor Barcenas, who runs a local health clinic, has stitched up children by flashlight.
In December, he was unable to give oxygen to a 54-year-old farmer because the power went out. The patient was rushed to a hospital nearly an hour away.
Their experiences are being echoed elsewhere, as an artificial intelligence building boom strains already fragile power and water infrastructures in communities around the world.
The United States has been at the nexus of a data centre boom, as OpenAI, Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others invest hundreds of billions to build the giant computing sites in the name of advancing artificial intelligence.
The companies have also exported the construction frenzy abroad, with less scrutiny.
Nearly 60% of the 1244 largest data centres in the world were outside the US as of the end of June, according to an analysis by Synergy Research Group, which studies the industry.
More are coming, with at least 575 data centre projects in development globally from companies including Tencent, Meta and Alibaba.
As data centres rise, the sites — which need vast amounts of power for computing and water to cool the computers — have contributed to or exacerbated disruptions not only in Mexico, but in more than a dozen other countries, according to a New York Times examination.
In Ireland, data centres consume more than 20% of the country’s electricity.
In Chile, precious aquifers are in danger of depletion.
In South Africa, where blackouts have long been routine, data centres are further taxing the national grid.
Similar concerns have surfaced in Brazil, Britain, India, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Singapore and Spain.
The issues have been compounded by a lack of transparency.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other tech companies often work through subsidiaries and service providers to build data centres, masking their presence and revealing little about the resources that the facilities consume.
Many governments are eager for an AI foothold, too. They have provided cheap land, tax breaks and access to resources and are taking a hands-off approach to regulation and disclosures.
Tech companies, which are racing to build data centres to power new AI models and create “superintelligence”, or AI with power that exceeds the human brain, said the boom brought jobs and investment.
They added that they were working to shrink their environmental footprint by generating their own energy and recycling water.
Microsoft said it had no information that its data centre complex in central Mexico had affected power and water supplies.
Electricity is unstable there, the company said. It added that it used minimal water and had an electricity load of up to 12.6 megawatts, which if used throughout the year would be the equivalent of what could power roughly 50,000 homes in Mexico.
“We looked deeply and found no indication that our data centres have contributed to blackouts or water shortages in the region,” said Bowen Wallace, Microsoft corporate vice-president for data centres in the Americas. “We will always prioritise the basic needs of the community.”
Electric grid infrastructure has been problematic in central Mexico and caused blackouts, said Alejandro Sterling, director of industrial development for the region. “Our capacity has been overdrawn,” he said.
Directly linking any data centre to local power and water shortages is difficult.
Yet building in areas with unstable grids and existing water strains has pressured already frail systems, according to experts, increasing the potential for cascading effects.
In country after country, activists, residents and environmental organisations have banded together to oppose data centres.
Some have tried blocking the projects, while others have pushed for more oversight and transparency.
In Ireland, authorities have limited new data centres in the Dublin area because of “significant risk” to power supplies.
After activists protested in Chile, Google withdrew plans to build a centre that could have depleted water reserves.
In the Netherlands, construction was halted on some data centres over environmental concerns.
“Data centres are where environmental and social issues meet,” said Rosi Leonard, an environmentalist with Friends of the Earth Ireland.
“You have this narrative that data centres are needed and will make us rich and thriving, but this is a real crisis.”
There are few signs of a slowdown.
Companies are expected to spend US$375 billion ($655b) on data centres globally this year and US$500b in 2026, according to investment bank UBS.
In Mexico, residents said data centre development should come with more investment in their communities.
In the village of La Esperanza, near Microsoft’s site, there was a hepatitis outbreak this summer. Water outages left residents unable to wash their hands or maintain basic hygiene. The disease spread quickly, and about 50 people got sick, Barcenas said.
“I blame the state governments for failing to negotiate support for the community,” he said. “Microsoft’s project involved millions of dollars of investment, and none of it went to us, to the people.”
An environmental movement
Horses roam the 60ha of open fields in the town of Ennis in western Ireland, which a developer began trying to turn into a €4b ($8b) data centre for an unnamed tech company five years ago.
Environmental groups and locals have filed legal objections and appeals to block the project.
Not long ago, such a plan probably would have sailed through.
For two decades, Ireland rolled out the red carpet for tech. Apple, Google, Microsoft and TikTok made the country their European base, and about 120 data centres are clustered around Dublin and dot the countryside beyond.
A third of the country’s electricity is expected to go to data centres in the next few years, up from 5% in 2015.
Ireland’s welcoming mood has soured. The country has become one of the clearest examples of the transnational backlash against data centres.
That opposition gained momentum in 2021 when an environmental socialist group, People Before Profit, protested at a data centre conference in Dublin.
Around the same time, residents in County Clare, where Ennis is, challenged the proposed facility that would be built on farmland.
Since then, a protest movement has grown.
Local residents, including bestselling author Sally Rooney, have raised concerns.
Last year, Darragh Adelaide, an activist with People Before Profit, was elected to the South Dublin County Council, which later rejected a data centre application from Google.
In January, storms caused power outages across western Ireland, fuelling debates over whether the grid was at a breaking point.
“There’s a reason why the grid is under strain, and it’s because of the disproportionate number of data centres,” said Sinead Sheehan, an activist who organised a petition against the Ennis project that was signed by more than 1000 people.
Ireland’s experience is a warning.
By 2035, data centres globally are projected to use about as much electricity as India, the world’s most populous country, according to the International Energy Agency.
A single data centre can also use more than 500,000 gallons (1,890,700 litres) of water a day, nearly as much as an Olympic-size swimming pool.
Environmental groups worldwide are sharing information, tactics and resources to push back.
In Spain, Aurora Gomez Delgado, an environmentalist who protested against a Meta facility near Madrid in 2023, was stunned when messages of support poured in from abroad.
Today she co-ordinates with dozens of groups worldwide. Her group, Tu Nube Seca Mi Río (Your Cloud Dries Up My River), helped inspire the creation of another group in France.
“There’s nowhere that doesn’t have a data centre,” Gomez Delgado said. “We’re co-ordinated. We’re talking to each other all the time.”
She and her colleagues said they realised it would be an uphill fight.
In Ireland, even with limitations on data centres near Dublin, authorities are trying to expedite the approvals of other sites in rural areas like County Clare and County Mayo.
Many in the business community support further development.
Environmentalists in Ireland have lost appeals against data centre construction in courts but hope their actions will deter companies. On September 30, about 50 people protested outside Dublin’s Parliament against more data centres.
A final legal appeal against the Ennis data centre still must be heard. Even if the project is greenlit, its future is in question.
Amazon recently revealed it was behind the project and had pulled out, meaning the local developer will need to find another tech company to partner with.
“We are committed to being a good neighbour, so we spend a lot of time listening to and understanding a community’s needs and priorities,” the company said in a statement.
Welcoming policies
In a gleaming office tower wrapped in solar panels and a 3D LED screen in the city of Queretaro in central Mexico, an official spearheading the country’s transformation into a data centre hub said interruptions to power and water were the price of progress.
“Those are happy problems,” said Sterling, director of industrial development for Queretaro, where many of Mexico’s 110 data centres are. “Not for the people that suffer it, but for the development of the place.”
It is a refrain echoed, if often less bluntly, by officials elsewhere as they woo tech companies.
Brazil is creating new tax breaks. Malaysia carved out an industrial zone to attract Chinese and Silicon Valley firms.
The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia ran a diplomatic campaign to get support from US President Donald Trump to buy prized AI chips that companies need.
The European Union has vowed to spend billions on new regional data centres.
Darragh O’Brien, Ireland’s Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment, said construction was migrating to countries with the most welcoming policies.
“A very important part of our industrial strategy is being at the leading edge of new technologies and data,” he said.
Government support worldwide has helped tech firms build with little accountability, said Ana Valdivia, an Oxford University lecturer studying data centre development.
Few environmental regulations were designed for data centres, and the companies often demand some level of secrecy from governments.
In Mexico, Sterling described an ambitious growth plan that would quadruple total electricity use from data centres to 1.5 gigawatts over the next five years, roughly the amount used by 1.25 million US homes.
Nondisclosure agreements with tech companies were needed to win the deals, he said, and he was required to keep information from communities and Mexico’s electricity utility.
“I signed that NDA as a public service,” he said.
Project operators are often camouflaged through subsidiaries or outside contractors.
In Mexico, at least one Microsoft data centre is owned and operated by Ascenty, a Latin American data centre company. In Ireland, the would-be Amazon data centre was developed by a firm called Art Data Centres.
Company representatives and government officials said new technology, including cooling systems that recycle water, was helping to solve the resource strains.
Data centres “use a lot of water, they don’t waste a lot of water”, Sterling said.
Teresa Roldan, an activist in Mexico, said she was sceptical of a new proposal in Queretaro to recycle sewage for public drinking water.
The Government has said the plan would serve citizens and industry, but data centre companies already have direct access to groundwater, she said. Residents would end up with filtered sewage water, she said.
‘All the electricity’
Microsoft’s data centre complex in central Mexico rises more than 240m atop a hill in the high mesquite plains north of Mexico City.
It is prime land. Locals, including Indigenous groups, had long grazed animals at a natural spring there. Today, the space is fenced off.
Drone footage shows a new reservoir inside, surrounded by fresh dirt.
Data centres arrived in Queretaro about five years ago, drawn by proximity to the US, relative safety from drug violence and a local government eager to welcome multinationals.
Microsoft came first, followed by Amazon and Google. Soon industrial parks buzzed with construction crews.
Impoverished small towns in the area, which have struggled with basic services, began experiencing longer water shortages and more blackouts, according to more than a dozen residents.
“There are patients with kidney failure who need their machines for treatment,” said Manuel Rodríguez, a local government representative. “There are people with diabetes who need to keep their medication refrigerated.”
Mexico’s national power company attributed recent outages to lightning strikes and stray animals running into equipment.
Residents have been hit financially by the power and water disruptions.
In Viborillas, a town near the data centres, Elizabeth Sanchez and her neighbours began experiencing water outages in June 2024.
They now split a US$60 fee for private water trucks.
Sanchez, 39, a homemaker, has also tossed spoiled food after electricity outages. A recent blackout fried her daughter’s computer and the refrigerator.
“We can’t keep up, so we adapt,” Sanchez said, adding that a part-time job as a courier has helped defray the costs.
Nicolás, 30, the mother-of-two in Las Cenizas who owns a convenience store, said the blackouts had twice forced her to dump rotting food from her family refrigerator this summer, while prolonged water cuts pushed her to buy more jugs for storing water.
“It’s a double cost,” she said.
Her children have got stomach bugs when the family cannot wash dishes properly, and school has been cancelled when the toilets did not flush.
The children were focused mostly on the electricity outages, which deprived them of their phones. “Technology is all he sees,” she said of her 11-year-old.
The timing of the problems — after Microsoft’s data centre complex became operational — pointed to one culprit, Nicolas said.
“They have all the electricity,” she said of the tech company. “I’m left with nothing.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Paul Mozur, Adam Satariano and Emiliano Rodríguez Mega
Photographs by: Cesar Rodriguez, Paulo Nunes dos Santos, Marcos Zegers
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES