Written by PPL Newsroom• October 2, 2026• 8:51 am• Science

One AI prompt uses little power, but India’s data centre build-out adds up

Google puts a median Gemini prompt at 0.24 Wh and five drops of water. Across India, data centres could more than double their power and water use by 2030.

Every AI prompt runs on servers that need electricity and cooling, and the total is growing quickly. The International Energy Agency (IEA) reports that electricity demand from data centres rose 17% in 2025, while global electricity demand grew 3%. In India, where capacity is expanding, the main questions are where these facilities are built and how they are powered and cooled.

What a single prompt costs

Estimates vary widely. In a 2025 paper, Google found that a single Gemini text prompt uses 0.24 watt-hours of energy, emits the equivalent of 0.03 grams of carbon dioxide and uses 0.26 millilitres of water, or about five drops. The company says the energy is less than watching nine seconds of television.

Earlier analyses were far higher. Some suggested 1.8 to 7 Wh per prompt, and others put water use at 45–50 millilitres. One reason is what gets counted. Google found that counting only the accelerator chips understates the energy by a factor of 2.4. Google’s own numbers apply to its systems and to a median prompt, so they are not a universal figure for all AI use.

Where the pressure builds

The larger issue is volume. The IEA estimates data centres used about 415 terawatt-hours in 2024, roughly 1.5% of global electricity. It projects this will reach about 945 TWh by 2030, just under 3% of the total. AI-focused data centres can draw as much power as an aluminium smelter, and they are clustered in a few places. Local grids and water supplies therefore feel the strain more than national totals suggest.

Noise is a local concern too. Opponents of one proposed US project cited water and power availability and noise as a residential disturbance.

What this means for India

India’s data centre footprint is small today but growing fast. A CEEW white paper says data centres used about 0.5% of national electricity and roughly 150 billion litres of water in 2024, and both could more than double by 2030. India has no binding national data-centre policy. The Wire notes that project-level water figures are often fragmented. Siting, power sourcing and cooling choices made now will shape local resource use for years.

India’s numbers

CEEW and Systemiq counted 271 data centres in India in January 2026, about a quarter of them in Mumbai. Market forecasts put installed capacity at about 1.5 gigawatts in 2025, rising to 4.5–6.5 GW by 2030. S&P Global Commodity Insights uses a different baseline. It estimates data centres used about 13 TWh, or 0.8% of India’s electricity, at the end of 2024, and expects about 57 TWh by 2030.

On water, one industry analysis estimates that a small 1 MW data centre with traditional cooling needs about 26 million litres a year, enough for the domestic needs of roughly 528 people. Disclosure is patchy. In Thane, an official said 12 million litres a day of treated sewage water would go to a proposed Amazon data centre. Amazon later said the site would use no water for cooling and that its approved supply of 0.01 million litres a day was for staff needs.

What could ease the load

Cooling choices matter. Closed-loop water systems and immersion cooling use less water, though closed-loop systems need more electricity. Immersion cooling is not yet widely used, largely because of cost. One market report expects most Indian data centres to adopt liquid cooling, which uses less water than traditional systems. The CEEW paper adds that diesel generator sets remain indispensable for power backup.

On power, the IEA expects renewables to meet nearly half of the growth in global data centre demand between 2024 and 2030. Whether India follows that path will depend on how quickly clean power and clearer disclosure rules arrive alongside new capacity.