Sustainable Pathways for OpenAI’s Stargate UAE
By Seera Sohal
The United Arab Emirates is set to upgrade its technology ties with the United States. OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT, is collaborating with prominent technology companies to create Stargate UAE. This initiative will be developed alongside leading American corporations, Nvidia and Cisco, the UAE-based G24 (an AI development holding company), and Japan’s SoftBank Group, an investment holding company. Stargate UAE comprises a large-scale data center complex designed to support the UAE’s goals of integrating artificial intelligence across various sectors—from governance to energy, healthcare to education, and beyond. Overall, Stargate UAE is designed to expand OpenAI’s business ties, bolster the United States’ AI dominance and the UAE’s influence in emerging markets, and facilitate a reciprocal U.S.-UAE AI partnership.
Stargate UAE will be the largest data center complex to be located outside of the United States, will span 10 square miles, and will have a power capacity of 5 gigawatts (GW). This means that this facility can support 5 GW at most, but will usually operate at a lower capacity. To illustrate, the average data center spans from 20,000 to 100,000 square feet and is designed for up to 100 megawatts (MW)—less than 1% and around 2%, respectively, of the intended size and power of Stargate UAE. This puts this project on par with novel hyperscale data centers. While Stargate UAE is not a surprising development—as skyrocketing AI demand has pushed companies to quickly build more data centers—this deal generates environmental concerns.
Data centers are known to pose harmful effects on the nearby environment, from consuming alarming rates of water and electricity to worsening pollution and fossil fuel use. These consequences exacerbate when hyperscale data centers are built to predominantly power AI. These risks do not bode well for the UAE—an environment with an arid climate and water scarcity, and a country diversifying its economic and energy portfolio beyond oil and gas dependency.
Environmental Risks
To illustrate the broader impact of data centers, these facilities accounted for 1% of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Furthermore, a 1-MW data center can consume up to 25.5 million liters of water annually for cooling, equivalent to the daily water use of approximately 300,000 people. This does not bode well for Stargate UAE, a 5-MW facility in a country with scorching temperatures and desalinated freshwater.
Beyond these broad impacts, data centers can create further environmental risks through their AI chips. Stargate UAE plans to rely on Nvidia's most advanced AI servers, known as Grace Blackwell GB300. While the developer companies have yet to share specific numbers, the analyst firm TrendForce told Reuters in May 2025 that these servers, each with 72 chips, could require around 140 kilowatts, which equals nearly 1,400 servers or 100,000 Nvidia chips. To assuage environmental concerns, Nvidia released a publication in July 2024 that claimed its lucrative GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip is environmentally friendly. It referenced a study by Murex, a French financial company, which found that these chips achieved a 4x reduced energy consumption and a 7x efficiency boost compared to less advanced chips. Finally, despite ongoing discussions around AI chip export controls, in November 2025, the United States approved selling Nvidia chips to the UAE’s G42, another Stargate developer. While AI chips proliferate energy consumption, Nvidia’s energy-efficient products appear to be a step in the right direction for Stargate UAE.
Yet another environmental risk persists: data centers’ intense power usage. These facilities’ servers, storage, and network equipment require continuous operation, so cooling systems must keep facility temperatures around 20°C (68°F). With these sites’ perpetual operation, intense cooling, and skyrocketed growth projections, data centers promise long-term environmental consequences. A Morgan Stanley analysis in September 2024 estimated that carbon emissions from hyperscale data centers will increase, and by 2030, global greenhouse gas emissions from data centers will equate to 40% of what the United States emits in one year.
Further, despite the push towards clean energy usage, many data centers rely on fossil fuels and thereby worsen climate-warming emissions, all while consuming great amounts of freshwater to stay cool. When applied to sweltering and water-scarce locations such as the UAE, Stargate UAE then holds the potential to create sizeable impacts in the country’s climate reality.
Sustainable Solutions
Despite these harrowing environmental concerns, Stargate UAE can mitigate these risks by adopting sustainable strategies. First, when announcing this project in May 2025, the partnered SoftBank Group declared Stargate UAE will rely upon nuclear, solar, and natural gas sources rather than data centers’ typical petrochemicals. This bodes well as natural gas emits less greenhouse gas than petrochemicals, but still more than renewables. Meanwhile, solar panels are easy to integrate, and solar energy sees promising growth in the UAE. Further, nuclear energy can be viewed as a baseload fuel source for data centers since, when compared to the intermittency of renewables such as solar and wind, nuclear energy is able to meet a facility’s 24/7 power needs. It also helps that nuclear energy yields almost zero greenhouse gas emissions.
Fittingly, the UAE’s 2024 white paper on technological cooperation with the U.S. espoused its renewable capabilities vis-à-vis its sustainable goals. The UAE affirmed its net-zero 2050 commitment based on its expanding solar and nuclear energy capabilities, and stated its intention to rely on low-carbon sources to fuel its digital infrastructure. Similarly, many data centers are moving towards renewables such as solar and nuclear to counter their usual reliance on fossil fuels. Based on Stargate UAE’s stated energy portfolio and its usage of energy-efficient Nvidia chips, this facility appears on track to minimize its emissions when compared to typical data centers.
However, data centers can still harm the environment by overconsuming water resources. As these facilities are constantly acquiring and processing information, data centers grow hot and require freshwater as an efficient, cost-effective cooling strategy. These facilities specifically use freshwater to avoid corroding servers with salt, microorganisms, or other harmful materials found in untreated water. It’s important to note that, within Earth’s overall water supply, only 0.5% is suited for human consumption, and just 3% is considered freshwater. Strikingly, per the World Economic Forum, cooling techniques for a 1-MW data center can require up to 25.5 million liters of water annually—comparable to the daily water needs of 300,000 people. Keep in mind that Stargate UAE will be 5x greater in fuel capacity and that the UAE’s population is 38x greater than this metric.
In response to these alarming water concerns, industry leaders have pledged to take action. In their 2025 environmental reports, Google and Microsoft shared their water replenishment plans to support local water systems, reduce water use, and conserve resources across their global operations. Stargate UAE developers should similarly recognize their responsibility towards their facility’s water usage. To ensure water-positivity, these companies should closely examine their cooling strategies. For example, many systems recirculate water; after cooling a data center’s servers, the warm water is then re-cooled and reused. Some data centers discharge their water into nearby treatment facilities or waterbodies. In the latter case, the released water, its contents, and its temperature are typically regulated to prevent harm to the local ecosystem.
Beyond repurposing methods, some technology manufacturing companies recommend adopting innovative strategies such as immersion cooling. This cooling technique involves placing hardware within dielectric fluid. This non-conductive liquid can easily absorb and carry away heat, thereby maintaining a data center’s longevity without consuming freshwater. Immersion cooling does not require air conditioning or freshwater, operates in near silence, and recirculates its coolant, thereby lowering carbon emissions and freshwater consumption, averting data centers’ typical noise pollution, and facilitating sustainable operations.
Stargate UAE has the potential to advance the UAE’s AI policy goals and strengthen its U.S. ties, or to harm the UAE’s environment and energy policy goals. Stargate UAE developers should carefully consider techniques for ensuring this hyperscale facility’s sustainability. By integrating ample solar and safe nuclear energy sources, avoiding freshwater overconsumption, and utilizing innovative cooling strategies, Stargate UAE can emerge as an industry leader and establish itself as a model of sustainable success.
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