Experts say Middle East tech boom poses challenges for energy and water supplies – so what can be done?
Cody Combs. August 08, 2025
In the epic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, there’s a line from Omar Sharif’s character, Sherif Ali, that inadvertently illustrates the current conundrum posed by AI data centres.
“The well is everything,” Sherif Ali tells T E Lawrence, pointing to a well – a subtle motif that recurs throughout the film emphasising how scarce and coveted water supplies are in the desert.
Fast forward to 2025, and although water is more readily available throughout the region, supplies are still vulnerable.
According to the World Bank, of the 17 most water-stressed countries in the world, 11 are in the Middle East and North Africa, making it one of the worst-affected regions.
At the same time, the region is in the middle of an economic renaissance made possible through artificial intelligence.
Along with the promise of AI, however, comes the need for huge data centres capable of handling all the commands from users around the world.
The data centres, consisting of incredibly powerful servers with thousands of central processing units and graphics processing units, need to stay cool somehow.
This cannot be achieved by the small fans we’ve grown accustomed to in our laptops and desktop PCs.
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Many of the newest data centres have elaborate air conditioning systems and geothermal cooling set-ups, but they also often rely on liquid-based cooling methods – and that’s where water comes in.
According to Alphabet-owned Google’s 2024 environmental impact report, the company’s data centres 6.1 billion gallons of water, a 17 per cent increase compared to 2022.
While not all data centres are the same, experts tell The National that cooling methods pose a challenge in terms of equitably maintaining supplies.
“The Gulf’s data‑centre boom is running head‑on into the laws of physics,” said Mohammed Soliman, director of the strategic technology programme at the Washington-based Middle East Institute think tank.
“AI workloads generate far more heat than traditional cloud operations, and in a region where summer air can hit 50°C, cooling at scale is the gating factor on how big you can build up at scale to capture a significant percentage of the global compute map outside of the US and China.”
Unlike the US and Europe, the Middle East cannot count on ample supplies of cold water for heat exchange, he added.
That simple factor means companies operating data centres in the Middle East will have to use what is known as two-phase immersion cooling systems.
These systems can help recycle and save water, though it can be expensive and they are far from perfect.
Mr Soliman said newer data centres planned for throughout the Middle East might also be able to be paired with existing desalination plants, so the heat generated by the centres can be “put to work” rather than wasted.
He added that while the warmer climate in the region poses an initial problem, technology is quickly evolving, and once the cooling and water conservation methods are perfected for data centres, the Middle East will ultimately benefit.
“If you crack the cooling challenge in the Gulf … you unlock the one missing piece in an otherwise world‑class AI ecosystem,” he said.
“It would give the Gulf the ability to compete head‑to‑head with the natural climate advantages of Scandinavia and Canada.” Innovations could lead to the Middle East being the most optimal place to “bring chips online”, Mr Soliman added.
Even in climates deemed more ideal for data centres, problems persist when it comes to keeping them cool.
In late March, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said so many people around the world were using a new feature in the company’s ChatGPT offering that the company’s own servers began to encounter problems.
“Our GPUs are melting,” he posted on X. OpenAI temporarily put limits on how many people could use the new feature, he added.
Meanwhile, as data centre construction has boomed over the past decade, the cooling technology making it all possible has blossomed.
According to Markets and Markets’ research, as of 2025, the cooling sector was worth about $11 billion, and if current trends continue, it is set to reach $24 billion by 2032.
With environmental stewardship remaining paramount in many countries, companies in the technology sector seem keenly aware of the need to improve the efficiency of data centres, along with the need to cut down on the water many of them use.
Thar Casey, chief executive of AmberSemi, a company that has “pioneering and patented” digital power management technology, said increasing efficiency was key to maintaining the cool temperatures necessary inside data centres.
“If we’re cutting the losses inside the centres through efficiency, are we going to need that much cooling? The answer would be no,” he said.
Mr Casey – who recently attended the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summitalong with Khaldoon Al Mubarak, Mubadala’s managing director and chief executive, and chairman of the UAE Executive Affairs Authority – said Gulf countries are showing tremendous interest in increasing the efficiency of data centres.
He added that the UAE, which recently announced plans for 5GW UAE-US AI Campus, is showing a particular affinity for lessening the environmental footprint of data centres while maximising the newest cooling technology.
“It’s extremely important to them and my message to these countries is that there is a way to solve the energy challenge inside the data centre,” he said, referring to AmberSemi’s conversion lines and switch controllers used by semiconductor companies and makers of electrical products.
Even the smallest increases of efficiency, Mr Casey said, could lead to significant electricity consumption, as well a major reduction in potential water used for liquid cooling methods of CPUs and GPUs.
With the Middle East rapidly stepping up its AI ambitions, coupled with the region’s affinity for improving water security, those data centre efficiencies could prove to be long-term game-changers.
https://www.thenationalnews.com/future/2025/08/08/middle-east-data-center-water-consumption/