Gigawatt Ledger · one-page briefing
Campus profile Under construction
Project Rainier
Amazon Web Services · New Carlisle, Indiana
The resource footprint
Modelled averageIn one day, this campus consumes about
8.7650-metre swimming pools
Filled with the volume of water consumed by the campus and its electricity supply.
The actual estimate5,787,257 US gallons consumed
Power-plant water may come from a different watershed. This is a volume comparison, not a claim that households lose this water.
At current operating capacity · Annual model spread evenly over time, not a live meter. Site estimates may differ by roughly ±40%.
Comparison sizes & sources
One pool = 50 × 25 × 2 metres = 2.5 million litres (about 660,430 US gallons). Pool depths vary; this is a defined comparison size.
One home-year = 10,791 kWh, the EIA’s 2022 average US residential electricity purchases. This excludes electricity generated at home and is a fixed US benchmark for all sites.
One car-year = 4.6 tonnes CO₂, the EPA’s typical passenger vehicle tailpipe estimate. The campus model is in CO₂e; the comparison expresses approximate climate scale, not equal mixtures of pollutants.
Monthly values are annual totals ÷ 12; daily values are annual totals ÷ 365. Actual demand varies. Comparisons cover the whole campus, including non-AI uses.
Water: see the numbers and sources
This is water used up, mainly through evaporation. Power-generation water may be used in a different watershed.
- Pressure on local water
- Low — a regional measure of demand compared with available water
- Where the water comes from
- Municipal potable supply
- Cooling
- Closed-loop liquid cooling; air-side economization most of the year
- Basis
- Modelled from cooling design — WUE 0.12 L/kWh
- Claimed vs observed
- 1.58 million gallons a day permitted. A 35 million-gallon-a-day dewatering request was tabled.
Air: see the numbers and sources
The totals include nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide and fine particles. They cover both this site and the power plants supplying it.
- Health range
- $89.9–257 million a year. Lower bound is EASIUR national mid-range; upper is EPA benefit-per-ton at a ~$12M VSL.
- Statistical deaths
- 21.4 a year at that VSL — a national-average conversion from tons, not a local concentration study.
- Equals
- 1,775,246 cars of NOx
- Where it burns
- MISO North — Indiana / Illinois
- Generation mix
- Coal 32 · Gas 28 · Nuclear 17 · Wind 19
- Diesel backup
- 878 gensets, 800 MW standby. Test-hours term: 96.0 t NOx/yr (50 h at 30% load, 8 kg NOx/MWh).
- CO₂e
- 2,419 kt/yr — climate, not air quality
The project, approvals and community concerns
- Who asked for it
- Anthropic — AWS builds and owns; Anthropic is the anchor compute customer
- Who approved it
- St. Joseph County rezoning of ~1,200 acres (2022, before the tenant was public); Indiana Michigan Power large-load tariff approved by the IURC in 2025
- What it serves
- Anthropic model training on AWS Trainium2/3 clusters
- IT capacity
- 600 MW current capacity / 1,800 MW full-build scenario
Up to thirty buildings on a former farm field. The IURC tariff was the first in the Midwest to require a data center to cover its own grid upgrades — a template other states have since copied.
Keep this guide handy
41.7075°, -86.5083°
Quote or share these estimates
Gigawatt Ledger (2026). Project Rainier: water and air. https://gigawatt-ledger.pages.dev/site/rainier/. Modelled from disclosed capacity; site-level error ±40%.
Include the estimate’s date, whether it describes current or proposed capacity, and its uncertainty. Get an embeddable card.
Gigawatt Ledger · September 2026. Water and air figures are estimated from public records and disclosed capacity. How we calculate them · Use this in your community.