When Cornell University systems engineer Fengqi You started modeling the environmental footprint of data centers three years ago, the AI boom was just beginning. Even then, You and his colleagues noticed something missing from the conversation.

“When we started this, we saw that AI was growing very fast,” You said. “It was clear it would have to be aligned with power-grid planning, with water and other resource planning. There were no discussions about these topics—but we wanted to bring real numbers, rigorous analysis on AI’s physical footprints.”

You and his team’s new paper, published Monday in the journal Nature Sustainability, delivers those numbers—and they’re enormous. Depending on how fast the AI industry expands, the authors predict U.S. data centers could annually consume as much water as 10 million Americans and emit as much carbon dioxide as 10 million cars. Those estimates put the annual resource consumption of the AI industry in the range of the entire state of New York.

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