CDMX and the water problem: why data centers are moving to Bajío, it is not about power
If you’re evaluating where to locate a data center, you’ve already compared electricity rates and latency. You’re 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 isn’t explained with adjectives; it’s explained with numbers.
Why water runs out before electricity
Electricity is generated, purchased, and transported. Water isn’t manufactured: it’s extracted from an aquifer or captured from a basin, and the volume available per inhabitant decreases as the population grows.
The National Water Commission measures this with a direct indicator: cubic meters of renewable water per inhabitant per year, and defines its own scarcity thresholds:
Under that criterion, Mexico City registered 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 with CONAGUA’s yardstick rather than energy’s:
That table inverts the priority order most analyses apply. The capital isn’t the worst site due to lack of infrastructure or fiber.
It’s the worst because its availability is the lowest in the country and because its pressure index is the only one CONAGUA projects above 100%. That means more water is being granted than the basin generates.
Why evaporative data center cooling weighs on that balance
Evaporative cooling tower cooling makes water circulate that evaporates and carries away heat. The water doesn’t return to the aquifer: it’s lost as vapor, and that’s not a technical detail.
The standard metric is WUE, liters consumed per kilowatt-hour of IT load. The industry average hovers 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 isn’t a nuance: there’s an order of magnitude in the volume that requires a concession title.
To size 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. That’s 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 Bajío: it’s not electricity
When it’s said that data centers move to Querétaro, León, or San Luis Potosí, the change is usually attributed to electricity. It’s true that Bajío has sun, fiber, and electricity transmission projects underway.
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 changes to Bajío is water and land. Querétaro offers 899 m³ per inhabitant versus 75 in the capital: almost thirteen times more water available.
In addition, it has 11,684 km² of continental surface versus 1,486 in the capital, where useful industrial land is scarce and expensive. And in the Valley of Mexico the bottleneck isn’t the rate: it’s the permit.
When the underlying aquifer is under veda, obtaining a concession title for large industrial consumption isn’t a procedure. The National Waters Law empowers the Federal Executive to decree veda zones in the face of overexploitation or drought.
| Entity | Renewable water per inhabitant (m³/year, 2022) | CONAGUA classification | Dominant legal restriction |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mexico City | 75 | Absolute scarcity | The “pressure index” 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 own margin |
| Querétaro | 899 | Chronic scarcity | Valle de Querétaro aquifer with deficit close to 66 hm³ per year |
What to ask before committing to a CDMX site
Before signing, a responsible operator should be able to answer with numbers, not promises:
- What water source does it come from and who holds the title? If it depends on an aquifer subject to veda, continuity isn’t 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, Water Statistics in Mexico 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 transparentize 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’s data center market — https://mordorintelligence.com/industry-reports/mexico-data-center-water-consumption-market.
- Data Centres, WUE and water usage guide in data centers — https://datacentres.com/guides/data-centre-water-usage.
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