There is no universal acreage or water-use winner between a data centre and a gas project. A data centre is an electricity user; a gas project may mean a power plant, fuel extraction and processing, pipelines, or some combination. A fair comparison must match the service, scale, place, timeframe, technology and accounting boundary—and count electricity-supply impacts beyond the data-centre site.
First define what counts as a “gas project”
The phrase can describe very different infrastructure. A gas-fired power plant generates electricity; upstream extraction and processing produce its fuel; gathering lines and pipelines move that fuel; transmission infrastructure carries electricity to users. A proposed project may include only one of these pieces or several.
A data centre, by contrast, is a large electricity load. It may have onsite backup generators, but that does not make it equivalent to a gas plant that supplies grid electricity. A centre can increase demand met by gas-fired generation without being a gas plant itself. Comparing a data centre’s fenced site with the full footprint of a gas supply chain—or comparing it only with a power plant’s parcel—answers different questions.
What a fair comparison needs to include
Before comparing figures, specify whether the question is about direct site impacts or the infrastructure needed to provide the same service. Keep direct impacts distinct from indirect impacts, and compare projects at a similar scale and over the same period.
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| Impact | Data centre | Gas project | Boundary to state |
|---|---|---|---|
| Land | Building, substation, cooling equipment and site works; generation and grid infrastructure may be offsite. | Power-plant site, and potentially wells, gathering and processing facilities, pipelines and transmission. | Report the direct site area separately from supporting infrastructure; state plant configuration and capacity. |
| Water | Onsite cooling and other facility uses, plus water associated with electricity generation. | Plant cooling and steam-cycle needs, plus possible water impacts from upstream fuel production. | Separate withdrawal from consumption and onsite use from electricity-supply water; identify watershed, source and cooling design. |
| Energy | Electricity load, including cooling overhead; backup generation may also be present. | Fuel input converted into electricity, with output depending on technology and operating mode. | Compare the same delivered service and timeframe; distinguish the data centre’s demand from the energy used to supply it. |
These boundaries matter because a facility-level cooling number does not capture water used at the power plants supplying it, while a plant acreage figure does not automatically include fuel infrastructure. The U.S. Geological Survey’s 2026 science synthesis on data centres and energy infrastructure discusses siting and the variability in cooling and water accounting.
How much land do the facilities occupy?
One illustrative comparison comes from the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2017 report Building a Clean Electricity Future: it gives a direct footprint of about 20 acres for a typical 555-megawatt combined-cycle gas plant and roughly half that area for a typical 360-megawatt simple-cycle plant.
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Those figures describe typical plant sites, not every project and not a complete gas-system footprint. They also refer to plants with different capacities and configurations, so they are not a like-for-like land-per-unit-of-electricity comparison. They do not establish how much land a data centre of a corresponding load would occupy. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency notes that centralized power generation and its fuel supply can involve land, transmission and upstream extraction impacts; the size of those additions depends on what infrastructure is included.
For a local project comparison, use the site plan and environmental review to identify the facility parcel, then account separately for associated substations, lines, pipelines and other supporting works. The answer can change with the boundary: direct site acreage is not the same measure as total land affected across a supply system.
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Why water figures can be misleading
Withdrawals are not the same as consumption
A water withdrawal is water taken from a source. Some may be returned, potentially warmer or otherwise altered; water consumed through evaporation is not returned to the local system in the same way. A comparison that reports only withdrawals can therefore give a different impression from one based on consumptive use. The U.S. Energy Information Administration and EPA describe these distinctions in their power-sector and electricity-generation materials.
Onsite cooling is only one part of a data centre’s water footprint
Data-centre water use may refer to water at the facility, including cooling, or to water used indirectly by generators supplying its electricity. These should be reported separately before being combined. The indirect component depends on the local supply mix and power-plant technologies; the direct component depends on the facility’s cooling design and operating conditions.
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National power-sector figures provide context, not a site estimate
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported 47.7 trillion gallons of cooling-water withdrawals for the U.S. electric power sector in 2021 and a sector-wide withdrawal intensity of 11,595 gallons per megawatt-hour that year. Those are national electric-sector figures, not data-centre water use or a factor that can be assigned to a particular facility. The EIA’s 2021 account of 2020 reports 47.5 trillion gallons of power-sector cooling-water withdrawals, down 10.5% from 2019; it attributes the trend to changes including power generation and cooling technology.
For a different measure, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s 2024 2024 United States Data Center Energy Usage Report estimates 4.52 litres per kilowatt-hour of indirect water consumption and 0.34 kilograms per kilowatt-hour of emissions for average U.S. data-centre electricity in 2023. These are report-derived national averages for electricity-related impacts, not direct cooling measurements for an individual centre. They should not be added to onsite use without checking the accounting scope and avoiding double counting.
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How much data-centre electricity comes from gas?
The answer depends on location and accounting method. The International Energy Agency’s 2025 Energy and AI report estimates that natural gas met 26% of global data-centre electricity demand in 2024 using its physical-supply-mix accounting. In its current U.S. mix estimate, gas supplied more than 40% of data-centre electricity. These are estimates of electricity physically consumed in regional grids, not universal shares and not necessarily the same as a company’s contractual electricity purchases.
The IEA’s 2025 Base Case projects global electricity generation to supply data centres at 460 terawatt-hours in 2024, more than 1,000 terawatt-hours in 2030 and 1,300 terawatt-hours in 2035. It also projects that natural gas and coal together will meet more than 40% of the additional data-centre electricity demand through 2030. That is an outlook, not an observed result or a forecast that applies identically to every region. The IEA’s global mix includes renewables, coal, gas and nuclear, with substantial regional differences.
Physical grid supply and corporate procurement are different accounting views. A renewable-energy contract may shape a company’s procurement claims, but it does not by itself show which generators are physically serving a particular load at a given time. A comparison of local impacts should use the relevant grid and generation data, while identifying any separate contractual accounting.
How to compare two proposed projects locally
- Define the service and scale. Record the data centre’s expected electricity load and the gas plant’s capacity and expected annual generation. Do not treat nameplate capacity and actual output as interchangeable.
- Set the boundary. Decide whether the comparison covers only each site or also electricity generation, fuel extraction and processing, pipelines, substations and transmission. Report direct and supporting infrastructure separately.
- Use the same geography and timeframe. Identify the watershed and grid region, and compare construction and operating impacts over a common period.
- Check technology and operating assumptions. Note gas-plant configuration, cooling systems, data-centre cooling design and expected operating mode.
- Keep water measures separate. Record withdrawals and consumption independently, and distinguish facility water from water associated with electricity supply.
- Use project-specific records for a permit-level answer. Consult the environmental review, water permit, site plan, capacity information, cooling design and grid-supply data. National averages and illustrative acreage cannot establish impacts for a named proposal.
What the available figures can—and cannot—settle
The evidence supports comparison of specific components and regional electricity mixes, but it does not establish a universal ratio of data-centre land or water use to a gas project’s. A defensible comparison must say whether it counts direct site area or the wider system, withdrawals or consumption, onsite water or indirect power-supply water, and what amount of electricity service is being compared. Without those matched inputs, a single winner would imply more precision than the figures support.
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