A data centre on the kite coast: what the public record says about Pecém

What is being built

The project occupies about 70 hectares inside the export processing zone of the Pecém port complex: two main buildings of more than 70,000 m² each, 20 data halls, a substation and a sewage treatment plant. Its operator is Omnia, the data-centre platform of the investment firm Patria; the first 200 MW of IT load, inside an electrical capacity of 300 MW, is reported to be fully contracted by ByteDance. Construction began in January 2026; by mid-September the structure of the first building was complete, and the operator's target for starting operations is July 2027.

It is the first phase of something larger. ByteDance has announced a plan to take the site to 1 GW, and total investment across all stages is put at more than R$200 billion, with about R$50 billion for the first phase; the equipment ByteDance is financing includes servers and GPUs, the chips used for AI. A municipal official has said five data centres have been approved for the same zone, only one of them public, and national energy planners expect at least six electricity-intensive data-centre projects in Ceará by 2035, with a combined demand of 2.7 GW — up to 3.34 GW in a later state-government estimate.

Why this is a coast story

Caucaia is the municipality that contains Cumbuco, one of Brazil's best-known kitesurf destinations, and the Cauípe lagoon, just behind the beach about 8 km from central Cumbuco, where children from the nearby village learn to jump and where a kitesurf competition was held on 29 August 2026. The lagoon sits inside an environmental protection area of 1,884 hectares, created by state decree in 1998 to protect its springs, water reserves and riparian forest.

According to the civil action filed in federal court in September 2026, the data centre is about 2 km from that protected area, which partly overlaps the Anacé Indigenous Land, still under study by the federal indigenous-affairs agency. The filing notes that nearby communities depend mostly on wells, in a region with a long record of water scarcity.

Power: 300 MW, and what “100% renewable” means here

When TikTok confirmed the project in December 2025, it said the site would run exclusively on renewable energy from new wind farms built for it by Casa dos Ventos, without drawing on the existing public grid. Later reporting describes the arrangement differently: a 20-year supply contract in which the new farms — about 700 MW, for roughly R$4 billion — feed the national grid, and the data centre's consumption is matched against their output by contract. Another report puts the wind investment at R$3.5 billion. The farms' locations have not been published.

The site also plans 120 diesel generators as backup. Federal prosecutors and public defenders have asked for a risk plan for the diesel fuel storage, monthly reporting to the national grid operator and connection to the Northeast's automatic load-shedding scheme — the last two concern how a load of this size behaves on the grid.

For scale: 300 MW is about a fifth of Ceará's estimated electricity load today, put at about 1.5 GW. Running at full capacity all year, 300 MW would come to about 2.6 TWh — our arithmetic, and an upper bound, since no annual consumption figure has been published. The 2.7 to 3.34 GW expected from data-centre projects by 2035 would be about 1.8 to 2.2 times the state's load today.

Water: four figures and a gap

Water is where the public record disagrees most. The same project appears in licences, permits, prosecutors' filings and press reports with four different water figures, and one gap:

• About 19.7 m³ a day

  What it is

  Consumption declared in the environmental licensing request

  Where it appears

  Preliminary-licence request, reported December 2025

• 30 m³ a day

  What it is

  Licensed use, described as a closed circuit supplied by an artesian well

  Where it appears

  State environmental licence, reported May 2025; restated by the operator, October 2026

• 88.24 m³ a day

  What it is

  Consumption cited by federal prosecutors and public defenders, nearly three times the figure first reported; the operator disputes it

  Where it appears

  Joint recommendation, May 2026

• 144 m³ a day (52,560 m³ a year, 1.66 L/s)

  What it is

  Maximum allowed by two well permits valid until April 2035; Casa dos Ventos, then responsible for the project, said the second well is for redundancy

  Where it appears

  State water-resources permits, reported November–December 2025

• Not published

  What it is

  Volume of reused water: federal officials have asked for, or said the site will use, reused water

  Where it appears

  Public statements, reported December 2025

What the water figures mean

The highest figure is about 7.3 times the lowest, and it is a ceiling, not a forecast: the state environmental agency says the permit does not commit the company to using the full volume. Even the ceiling is modest next to a town or an industry. The head of the state water agency compared it to the daily use of a 150-family condominium and set it against the roughly 1,000 L/s used by the Pecém industrial district; that comparison was reported as 0.001%, but the figures as given work out to about 0.17%.

Volume is not the whole question. The water comes from wells in a dune area where communities also rely on wells, and Caucaia declared a drought emergency at least once in 16 of the 21 years from 2003 to 2024, according to press reports. The civil action asks for pumping tests while neighbouring wells are monitored and for empirical validation of the groundwater model and of its 0.40 m drawdown threshold. TikTok describes the cooling as a closed water-reuse loop and the civil action describes groundwater extraction for cooling; in October 2026 the operator said the site would use 30 m³ a day, about 3 m³ of it for cooling and the rest for human consumption. No technical description of the cooling system has been published.

Licensing and the court case

The state environmental agency classified the project as low-to-medium impact, which requires a simplified environmental report rather than a full environmental impact study. Preliminary and installation licences have been granted; the operating licence has not.

In May 2026, federal prosecutors and public defenders recommended that the data centre not start operating before new environmental requirements were met. In September 2026 they filed a civil action in federal court (case 0080626-66.2026.4.05.8100) asking that no operating licence be issued until the Anacé people are consulted under ILO Convention 169 and a full impact study is done. Four civil-society organisations have since asked for construction itself to stop while the courts decide. The Anacé have protested against the project, including in August 2025 and April 2026.

The operator says its licences are valid, that the new requests concern only the operating phase and that, for now, it does not expect a delay to its July 2027 target; it also disputes the prosecutors' water figure. TikTok declined to comment, saying it is not a party to the case. As of 3 November 2026, we found no reported ruling.

What has not been published

These are the numbers that would let anyone judge the project's footprint, and none of them is public yet:

• A metered or engineered water figure for full operation, and the cooling technology behind it.
• Expected annual electricity use and efficiency (power usage effectiveness), not just capacity.
• The location and output of the wind farms in the supply contract, and whether the data centre's use is matched to them hour by hour or only over a year.
• The diesel fuel stored on site, and how many hours the 120 generators are expected to run in tests and outages.
• Groundwater monitoring data from the wells around the site.
• What the site will compute: video delivery, recommendation, AI training or AI inference.

What would make this analysis wrong

Every figure here comes from licences, permits, court filings, company statements and press reports, not from measurement. Capacity is not consumption: the site may run well below 300 MW, especially in its first years, and the water ceilings may never be reached. The operator disputes at least one of the water figures, and reports differ on the size of the new wind investment. When an operating licence, a court decision or measured data is published, this analysis will be updated.

AYON Ecosystem takes no position on whether the data centre should operate. This analysis maps what is known and what is not, so that riders, residents and readers can follow the decision with the same numbers. Missing measurement is a familiar gap on this coast: AYON Ecosystem's earlier coastal research found no station of the national weather service's automatic network within 60 km of Cumbuco. Measurement, more than opinion, is what would settle most of the questions above.

References & data

1. 1.Diário do Nordeste — Omnia segue cronograma de Data Center do TikTok no Ceará em meio à ação do MPF (Sep 2026) — Construction status (first building's structure complete, September 2026), 20 data halls, two buildings of more than 70,000 m² each, 200 MW of IT load reported as contracted by ByteDance, operator's July 2027 target and its view that the lawsuit concerns only the operating phase.
2. 2.InvestNews — O data center do TikTok no Ceará: o quebra-cabeça por trás do gigante de R$ 200 bilhões (Jun 2026) — Ownership (Omnia, Patria, ByteDance, Casa dos Ventos), 300 MW first phase, about R$50 billion initial investment, plan for 1 GW and more than R$200 billion, servers and GPUs, 20-year power contract, about 700 MW of new wind farms for about R$4 billion feeding the national grid, operator disputing the water figure, Anacé protests in August 2025 and April 2026.
3. 3.eixos — TikTok confirma primeiro data center na América Latina (Dec 2025) — TikTok's confirmation, December 2025: more than R$200 billion across all stages, exclusively renewable energy from new dedicated wind farms, no draw on the existing public grid, closed-loop cooling, first operations in 2027.
4. 4.The Next Web — Omnia and Casa dos Ventos sign $2bn power deal anchoring TikTok's Brazil data centre (May 2026) — Energy-supply deal of about $2 billion, May 2026; about R$3.5 billion in new wind capacity; 200 MW productive load within a 300 MW envelope; farm locations not named.
5. 5.O POVO — Apenas um dos data centers aprovados em Caucaia segue sem negócio (Jul 2026) — A municipal official: five data centres approved for the Omnia complex in the export processing zone, only one of them public, July 2026.
6. 6.Diário do Nordeste — Data centers no Ceará podem consumir energia equivalente a 7 milhões de residências (Aug 2026) — At least six electricity-intensive data-centre projects expected in Ceará by 2035 with a forecast demand of 2.7 GW (national ten-year energy plan); up to 3.34 GW from 2027 to 2035 in the state government's later estimate.
7. 7.O POVO — Casa dos Ventos amplia investimentos e quer alcançar 11 GW até 2030 (Mar 2026) — Ceará's current electricity load estimated at about 1.5 GW, March 2026.
8. 8.Ceará State Decree 24,957 of 5 June 1998 — Lagamar do Cauípe environmental protection area — Creates the Lagamar do Cauípe environmental protection area in Caucaia, 1,884 hectares, to protect springs, water reserves and riparian forest.
9. 9.Diário do Nordeste — Lago Nautic Festival leva competições náuticas à Lagoa do Cauípe (Aug 2026) — Kitesurf among the competitions at the Cauípe lagoon, Caucaia, on 29 August 2026.
10. 10.SmarterTravel — Brazil's kite surfing paradise — Kitesurfing on the Cauípe lagoon near Cumbuco, where children from the nearby village practise jumps.
11. 11.MPF — MPF e DPU vão à Justiça para impedir operação de data center no Complexo do Pecém (Sep 2026) — Federal prosecutors' and public defenders' civil action 0080626-66.2026.4.05.8100, September 2026: 300 MW, 120 diesel generators, about 70 hectares, about 2 km from the protected area, Anacé consultation under ILO Convention 169, full impact study before any operating licence.
12. 12.O POVO — Ação civil pública pede que Data Center Pecém não entre em operação (Sep 2026) — Details of the civil action: pumping tests with monitoring of neighbouring wells, empirical validation of the groundwater model and of its 0.40 m drawdown threshold, groundwater extraction for cooling.
13. 13.O POVO — MPF e DPU cobram data center do TikTok sobre uso d'água e de 120 geradores a diesel (May 2026) — Joint recommendation, May 2026: 88.24 m³ a day of groundwater, nearly three times the 30 m³ a day first reported; 120 diesel generators; fuel-storage risk plan; monthly reports to the grid operator; connection to the load-shedding scheme.
14. 14.Diário do Nordeste — Em meio a críticas sobre Data Center no CE, gestor da Cogerh garante que uso d'água não é 'expressivo' (Dec 2025) — Two well permits of 26,280 m³ a year each (52,560 m³ a year, 1.66 L/s, about 144 m³ a day), valid until April 2035; about 19.7 m³ a day declared in the preliminary-licence request; comparison with a 150-family condominium and with the industrial district's 1,000 L/s, reported as 0.001%.
15. 15.Business & Human Rights Resource Centre — Ceará authorises TikTok data centre to extract water volumes far above those originally planned (Nov 2025) — Intercept Brasil report, November 2025: the permits allow 7.3 times the volume first declared; Casa dos Ventos said the two permits ensure operational redundancy; the state environmental agency said the licence does not commit the company to using the full volume.
16. 16.O POVO — Projeto de data center no Ceará tem quase 30% da capacidade de processamento de dados do Brasil (Oct 2026) — The operator's chief engineer, October 2026: about 30 m³ a day in operation, about 3 m³ of it for cooling and 27 m³ for human consumption; 200 MW first phase; connection to the national grid.
17. 17.Business & Human Rights Resource Centre — TikTok datacentre in a region already affected by droughts (May 2025) — Report of May 2025: licensed use of 30 m³ a day in a closed circuit from an artesian well; drought emergency declared at least once in 16 of the 21 years from 2003 to 2024.
18. 18.Canaltech — Entidades pedem paralisação imediata das obras do data center do TikTok no Ceará (Sep 2026) — Four civil-society organisations ask for construction to stop while the courts decide, September 2026; TikTok declines to comment as it is not a party.
19. 19.AYON Ecosystem — Sixty kilometres of INMET silence — Earlier AYON Ecosystem coastal research: no station of the national weather service's automatic network within 60 km of Cumbuco.

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