Google Changhua data center, Changhua, Changhua County

Google's data center in the Changhua Coastal Industrial Park, in Changhua County on Taiwan's west coast, has been running since 2013 on a 15-hectare site, and Google says it has invested more than $1.6 billion in Taiwan since arriving. Google picked the Changhua site in September 2011, when the project was billed as a US$100 million-plus data center and one of the most efficient in Asia.

The facility cost $600 million by the time it opened in 2013, DCD reported, and Google later added a second Taiwanese data center in Tainan. In 2020 Taiwanese papers reported that Google was also behind a land purchase in a Yunlin County industrial park for a third, though the company did not confirm it.

Water is the local question. In 2016 a Taiwanese newspaper reported that Google's expansion in Changhua had stalled for lack of water, which the economic ministry rejected. The Water Resources Agency said that when Google came to build in 2013, officials and Taiwan Water found a way to meet its demand for 6,000 cubic meters of water a day, and that the data center was then using only 700. Taiwan Water said it was spending NT$1.64 billion on projects to raise Changhua's water supply, including a purification plant on the Fuma Canal. A March 2026 Taipei Times commentary said Google had since shifted its Changhua cooling to non-potable industrial water and begun investing in local water stewardship programs.

The pressure on Taiwan's water and power has grown with the AI build-out: during the 2021 drought about 74,000 hectares of rice paddy went dry as water was rerouted to industry, the commentary noted. Google signed Taiwan's first corporate geothermal power purchase agreement, with Baseload Capital, and backed a citizen solar plant in Changhua's Beidou Township that began operating in 2024.

The commentary's author, Romain Blachier, called for binding water-efficiency rules for Taiwan's data centers and a public record of what each new facility draws from the grid and aquifers.