01 Water · U.S. + Global
Water: AI data centers vs. U.S. golf courses
Count only cooling water and data centers are a tenth of golf; add the power plants and they nearly match it.
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The Atlas of Comparisons
Every comparison on the site, gathered as one tray of engraved plates. Filter by metric or scope, sort by what you want to see first, and open any plate for its chart, sources, boundary, and method.
01 
02 Water · U.S. + Global
Water: U.S. residential outdoor use vs. AI data centers
American lawns drink 35 to 70 times what data centers use to cool themselves.
03 CO₂ · U.S. + Global
CO₂: U.S. driving vs. global data centers
Every car, truck and bus in the U.S. out-emits the world's data centers about eightfold.
04 Electricity · U.S. + Global
Electricity: U.S. residential vs. global data centers
U.S. homes use more than three times the electricity of every data center on Earth.
05 CO₂ · Global
CO₂: Global commercial aviation vs. data centers
Global flights emit roughly five times what data centers do.
06 CO₂ · Global
CO₂: Global cement and steel vs. data centers
Making the world's cement and steel out-emits data centers more than twentyfold.
07 Electricity · Global
Electricity: Bitcoin mining vs. data centers
Bitcoin mining draws a third to a half of the whole data-center fleet's power.
08 Electricity · Global
Electricity: Global EV charging vs. data centers
EV charging already pulls about 40% of global data-center electricity, and climbing fast.
09 Electricity · Global
Electricity: Global video streaming vs. data centers
Streaming's annual electricity sits in the data-center range, but the estimate is shaky.
10 Electricity · Global
Electricity: Global video gaming vs. data centers
Global gaming may rival data centers, or sit at a quarter; the underlying data is weak.
11 CO₂e · Global
CO₂: Global cattle (beef and dairy) vs. data centers
The world's cattle out-emit data centers about twentyfold, mostly as methane.
12 Electricity · U.S. + Global
Electricity: U.S. residential air conditioning vs. global data centers
Cooling U.S. homes burns over half the world's data-center electricity each year.
13 CO₂ · U.S. + Global
Emissions: U.S. gas-powered lawn equipment vs. data centers
U.S. gas mowers and blowers emit about a sixth of the global data-center total, in far dirtier air.
14 Electricity · U.S. + Global
Electricity: U.S. holiday lighting vs. global data centers
A month of U.S. holiday lights is about 1.4% of the year-round data-center fleet.
15 CO₂ · U.S. + Global
CO₂ per hour: driving vs. AI, gaming & streaming
An hour of driving emits hundreds to thousands of times an hour of AI chat.
Read the full methodology ledger →
Comparison · Plate 01
Water: AI data centers vs. U.S. golf courses
U.S. golf courses applied roughly 531 billion gallons of water in 2024. The global figure is harder to pin down — no clean primary source gives a total — but extrapolating from U.S. per-course averages and the R&A's count of about 38,860 courses worldwide puts it somewhere in the 800 to 1,500 billion gallon range. Every data center on the planet uses 45–90 billion gallons directly for cooling, and 500–700 billion when you also count the water used to generate their electricity. The U.S. data center share is about 17 billion direct and 211 billion indirect (LBNL, 2023). Which framing is fair depends on which boundary you draw — and the boundary is most of the argument.
Boundary note: the answer depends on where you draw the line — whether only direct use is counted, or the upstream water and power are included too.
Billion gallons per year
Comparison · Plate 02
Water: U.S. residential outdoor use vs. AI data centers
American households spray roughly 3.2 trillion gallons of water on their lawns, gardens, and driveways every year — somewhere between 35 and 70 times what every data center on the planet uses directly for cooling, and roughly five times the broader figure that counts the water used to generate data-center electricity. The EPA estimates about half of that outdoor water is wasted to overwatering. Lawns are the largest irrigated crop in the United States by area; data centers are not yet close.
Boundary note: the answer depends on where you draw the line — whether only direct use is counted, or the upstream water and power are included too.
Billion gallons per year
Comparison · Plate 03
CO₂: U.S. driving vs. global data centers
U.S. on-road transportation — every car, truck, and bus on American roads — emitted about 1,440 million metric tons of CO₂ in 2022. That's about eight times what every data center on the planet emitted in 2024 combined. The hourly hero on the home page already shows driving outpacing any digital activity per hour; the annual ledger says the same thing in different units. AI's footprint is large enough to argue about; the cars in just one country still dwarf it.
Million metric tons CO₂ per year
Comparison · Plate 04
Electricity: U.S. residential vs. global data centers
American homes used roughly 1,550 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024 — about 38 percent of total U.S. consumption, and more than three times what every data center on the planet drew that year. The world's data-center electricity converts to roughly 40 million U.S. households' worth: around 30 percent of American homes. Heating and cooling houses still moves more electricity than the entire global compute layer, even as the layer grows.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 05
CO₂: Global commercial aviation vs. data centers
Global commercial aviation emitted about 950 million metric tons of CO₂ in 2023 — more than five times what every data center on the planet emitted the following year. Aviation is one of the better-tracked comparisons here, and one of the harder ones to abate. Even with data-center electricity projected to roughly double by 2030, aviation will likely remain comparable or larger.
Million metric tons CO₂ per year
Comparison · Plate 06
CO₂: Global cement and steel vs. data centers
Producing the cement and steel for the world's buildings, bridges, and roads emits roughly 4,200 million metric tons of CO₂ a year — more than twenty times the global data-center fleet's emissions. Cement alone, around 1,600 Mt, dwarfs data centers almost nine times over. The familiar industries — concrete, beams, chimneys — still set the climate scale. AI is becoming visible inside it; it has not yet rearranged it.
Million metric tons CO₂ per year
Comparison · Plate 07
Electricity: Bitcoin mining vs. data centers
Estimates of Bitcoin's annual electricity use cluster between 140 and 200 terawatt-hours — somewhere in the range of 30 to 43 percent of the global data-center fleet. Cambridge's direct survey of mining operators sits at the low end; their hashrate-based CBECI index and market-based estimators sit higher. Bitcoin is a single-purpose load, hard to abate by design: the network's security depends on burning electricity. Whatever you make of the trade-off, it is in the same scale conversation as data centers without being part of them.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 08
Electricity: Global EV charging vs. data centers
The world's electric vehicles drew about 180 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024, up nearly 60 percent in a single year — nearly 40 percent of the global data-center figure. The IEA expects EV charging to grow past 2,000 TWh by 2035 in its main scenario. EVs and data centers are now the same kind of question for grid planners: where the new gigawatts land, and what generates them.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 09
Electricity: Global video streaming vs. data centers
Estimates of global video streaming electricity range from roughly 100 to 300 terawatt-hours a year, depending heavily on whether end-user devices, home Wi-Fi, and last-mile networks are counted on streaming's side of the ledger or attributed elsewhere. Per hour, an HD stream emits about 36 to 56 grams of CO₂ — below an hour of gaming or driving and roughly comparable to ordinary AI chat. The annual number stays unsettled because most of the energy lives in components shared with everything else: routers, CDNs, screens. Treat any 'streaming uses as much as a small country' headline with care; the IEA has spent years correcting the high end.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 10
Electricity: Global video gaming vs. data centers
Estimates of global gaming electricity sit in a wide and contested band — somewhere between 75 and 285 terawatt-hours a year, depending on whose assumptions you accept. The high end approaches the global data-center figure; the low end is closer to a quarter of it. Almost no number on this site has weaker underlying data; it earns its place mostly because the comparison gets cited so often. Take it as a reminder that 'video games use as much electricity as Country X' is a claim resting on a long chain of rough multipliers.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 11
CO₂: Global cattle (beef and dairy) vs. data centers
The world's cattle — beef and dairy combined — generate about 3,800 million metric tons of CO₂-equivalent emissions a year, mostly from methane belched by ruminants and from clearing land for pasture. That is about twenty-one times the data-center figure, and the comparison is one of the few here where 'global vs. global' lines up cleanly. Cows have a head start of about ten thousand years; on this scale they are still ahead.
Million metric tons CO₂-equivalent per year
Comparison · Plate 12
Electricity: U.S. residential air conditioning vs. global data centers
American homes used about 254 terawatt-hours of electricity for air conditioning in 2020 — about 55 percent of the entire global data-center electricity figure for 2024. AC use rises sharply in summer and is, in many U.S. regions, the single biggest driver of grid stress on hot afternoons. A seasonal residential load in one country sits in the same league as the year-round, planet-wide computing fleet.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 13
Emissions: U.S. gas-powered lawn equipment vs. data centers
Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment in the United States — mowers, blowers, trimmers — emitted about 30 million metric tons of CO₂ in 2020, plus large shares of the country's smog-forming pollutants. The CO₂ figure is around 17 percent of every data center on the planet combined. The bigger story is air quality: gas mowers and blowers account for nearly one in six U.S. volatile-organic-compound emissions and more than one in ten nitrogen-oxide emissions. AI's grid load gets headlines; gas mowers do quieter, dirtier work in the same neighborhoods.
Million metric tons CO₂ per year
Comparison · Plate 14
Electricity: U.S. holiday lighting vs. global data centers
American holiday lighting consumes roughly 6.6 terawatt-hours of electricity each December — more than the entire annual electricity supply of El Salvador and several smaller nations. The figure dates to a 2008 Department of Energy estimate and is probably lower today as LED string lights have largely replaced incandescent bulbs. The U.S. still spends as much electricity on a month of yard ornaments as some countries spend running everything for a year. Compared with the year-round, planet-wide data-center fleet, it is a footnote — about 1.4 percent.
Terawatt-hours per year
Comparison · Plate 15
CO₂ per hour: driving vs. AI, gaming & streaming
An hour of gasoline driving emits 14,000-18,000 grams of CO₂. An hour of ordinary AI chat emits 5-200 grams. Heavy AI workflows, high-end gaming, and HD streaming all cluster between those two -- and far closer to chat than to driving. The big numbers live at data-center scale: grid load, water draw, where new construction lands and what local utilities can carry. That's where the rest of the site looks.
Grams CO₂ per hour