CDMX’s water problem: why data centers are moving to the Bajío (it is not power)
If you are evaluating where to locate a data center, you have already compared electricity rates and latency. You are missing the data point that today defines megawatt decisions in Mexico: how many cubic meters of water per inhabitant exist at the site where the cooling will go.
Mexico City is the country’s largest market and, at the same time, the entity with the least renewable water per person. That tension is not explained with adjectives; it is explained with numbers.
Why water runs out before power
Electricity is generated, bought and transported. Water is not manufactured: it is extracted from an aquifer or captured from a basin, and the volume available per inhabitant falls as the population grows.
Mexico’s National Water Commission (CONAGUA) measures this with a direct indicator: cubic meters of renewable water per inhabitant per year, and defines its own scarcity thresholds:
Against that criterion, Mexico City recorded 75 m³ per inhabitant in 2022, according to CONAGUA. It is the third most stressed entity in the country, behind the State of Mexico and Guanajuato.
The national average is 3,569 m³. The capital has less than one-fiftieth of the country’s availability, and that gap widens every year.
The water profile of the three candidates
The three states that concentrate data center operations in Mexico look very different when measured by CONAGUA’s yardstick rather than by energy:
That table inverts the priority order that most analyses apply. The capital is not the worst site due to lack of infrastructure or fiber.
It is the worst because its availability is the lowest in the country and because its pressure level is the only one that CONAGUA projects above 100%. That means more water would be granted than the basin generates.
Why an evaporative data center weighs on that balance
Evaporative cooling tower recirculates water that evaporates and carries away heat. The water does not return to the aquifer: it is lost as vapor, and that is not a technical detail.
The standard metric is WUE, liters consumed per kilowatt-hour of IT load. The industry average is around 1.8 L/kWh, while best-performing facilities reach 0.2 L/kWh with dry cooling.
Between an evaporative plant and a closed-loop plant there is no nuance: there is an order of magnitude in the volume requiring a concession title.
To dimension it: a 100 MW campus with conventional evaporative cooling consumes between 1.1 and 4.5 million liters per day, depending on climate and load factor. Equivalent to the daily consumption of a town of 10,000 to 30,000 inhabitants.
In Mexico, data center water consumption is estimated at 16.8 billion liters in 2025, with annual growth above 11%.
Why operators move to the Bajío: it is not power
When it is said that data centers are moving to Querétaro, León or San Luis Potosí, the change is usually attributed to energy. It is true that the Bajío has sun, fiber and power transmission projects under way.
But if the main signal were electricity, operators would stay in the capital, which concentrates the country’s largest load and the largest grid.
What really moves the Bajío is water and soil. Querétaro offers 899 m³ per inhabitant versus 75 in the capital: nearly thirteen times more water available.
In addition, it has 11,684 km² of continental surface versus 1,486 of the capital, where useful industrial land is scarce and expensive. And in the Valley of Mexico the bottleneck is not the rate: it is the permit.
When the underlying aquifer is under a ban (veda), obtaining a concession title for large industrial consumption is not a formality. The National Waters Law empowers the Federal Executive to decree ban zones in case of overexploitation or drought.
| Entity | Renewable water per inhabitant (m³/year, 2022) | CONAGUA classification | Dominant legal restriction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico City | 75 | Absolute scarcity | The “pressure level” is projected above 100%; supply depends on aquifers and the Cutzamala System |
| State of Mexico | 263 | Absolute scarcity | Shares the Valley of Mexico basin; contributes no margin of its own |
| Querétaro | 899 | Chronic scarcity | Querétaro Valley aquifer with deficit close to 66 hm³ per year |
What to ask before committing to a site in CDMX
Before signing, a responsible operator should be able to answer with numbers and not promises:
- Where does the water come from and who holds the title? If it depends on an aquifer subject to a ban, continuity is not guaranteed.
- How many liters will each megawatt of IT load consume? The answer must include the real load factor, not the theoretical peak.
- Does the site use evaporative cooling or closed-loop? An evaporative tower in the Valley of Mexico is a high-risk permit.
- Is there a documented redundancy plan for extreme drought years, when Cutzamala reaches its lowest level?
- Does the operator measure and publish its WUE? Without that indicator, transparency on the issue remains discourse.
Sources
- CONAGUA, Estadísticas del Agua en México 2023 — https://sinav30.conagua.gob.mx/Descargas/pdf/EAM2023_f.pdf
- National Waters Law, current text with reform of December 11, 2025 — http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LAN.pdf
- El Economista, tech companies must disclose water use in data centers — https://eleconomista.com.mx/tecnologia/tecnologicas-deben-transparentar-agua-centros-datos-mexico-advierten-especialistas-20261022-839950.html
- Mordor Intelligence, water consumption in Mexico data centers — https://mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/mexico-data-center-water-consumption-market
- Data Centres, WUE guide and data center water consumption — https://datacentres.com/guides/data-centre-water-usage
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