Greenpeace report How Clean is Your Cloud? I saw mentioned in 3T magazine news is actually quite interesting reading. This year’s report provides a look at the energy choices some of the largest and fastest growing IT companies. The report analyzes the 14 IT companies and the electricity supply chain in more than 80 data center cases.
The report contains also lots of interesting background information on both IT and telecom energy consumption. I recommend checking it out. Here are some points picked from How Clean is Your Cloud? report:
Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo – these global brands and a host of other IT companies are rapidly and fundamentally transforming the way in which we work, communicate, watch movies or TV, listen to music, and share pictures through “the cloud.”
The growth and scale of investment in the cloud is truly mind-blowing, with estimates of a 50-fold increase in the amount of digital information by 2020 and nearly half a trillion in investment in the coming year, all to create and feed our desire for ubiquitous access to infinite information from our computers, phones and other mobile devices, instantly.
The engine that drives the cloud is the data center. Data centers are the factories of the 21st century information age, containing thousands of computers that store and manage our rapidly growing collection of data for consumption at a moment’s notice. Given the energy-intensive nature of maintaining the cloud, access to significant amounts of electricity is a key factor in decisions about where to build these data centers. Industry leaders estimate nearly $450bn US dollars is being spent annually on new data center space.
Since electricity plays a critical role in the cost structure of companies that use the cloud, there have been dramatic strides made in improving the energy efficiency design of the facilities and the thousands of computers that go inside. However, despite significant improvements in efficiency, the exponential growth in cloud computing far outstrips these energy savings.
How much energy is required to power the ever-expanding online world? What percentage of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is attributable to the IT sector? Answers to these questions are very difficult to obtain with any degree of precision, partially due to the sector’s explosive growth, a wide range of devices and energy sources, and rapidly changing technology and business models. The estimates of the IT sector’s carbon footprint performed to date have varied widely in their methodology and scope. One of the most recognized estimates of the IT sector’s footprint was conducted as part of the 2008 SMART 2020 study, which established that the sector is responsible for 2% of global GHG emissions.
The combined electricity demand of the internet/cloud (data centers and telecommunications network) globally in 2007 was approximately 623bn kWh (if the cloud were a country, it would have the fifth largest electricity demand in the world). Based on current projections, the demand for electricity will more than triple to 1,973bn kWh (an amount greater than combined total demand of France, Germany, Canada and Brazil).
The report indicates that, due to the economic downturn and continued energy efficiency and performance improvements, global energy demand from data centers from 2005-2010 increased by 56%. Estimates of data center electricity demand come in at 31GW globally, with an increase of 19% in 2012 alone. At the same time global electricity consumption is otherwise essentially flat due to the global recession is still a staggering rate of growth.
Given the scale of predicted growth, the source of electricity must be factored into a meaningful definition of “green IT”. Energy efficiency alone will, at best, slow the growth of the sector’s footprint. The replacement of dirty sources of electricity with clean renewable sources is still the crucial missing link in the sector’s sustainability efforts according to the report.
The global telecoms sector is also growing rapidly. Rapid growth in use of smart phones and broadband mobile connections mean mobile data traffic in 2011 was eight times the size of the entire internet in 2000. It is estimated that global mobile data traffic grew 133% in 2011, with 597 petabytes of data sent by mobiles every month. In 2011, it is estimated that 6 billion people or 86.7% of the entire global population have mobile telephone subscriptions. By the end of 2012, the number of mobile connected devices is expected to exceed the global population. Electronic devices and the rapidly growing cloud that supports our demand for greater online access are clearly a significant force in driving global energy demand.
What about telecoms in the developing and newly industrialized countries? The report has some details from India (by the way it is expected that India will pass China to become the world’s largest mobile market in terms of subscriptions in 2012). Much of the growth in the Indian telecom sector is from India’s rural and semi-urban areas. By 2012, India is likely to have 200 million rural telecom connections at a penetration rate of 25%. Out of the existing 400,000 mobile towers, over 70% exist in rural and semi-urban areas where either grid-connected electricity is not available or the electricity supply is irregular. As a result, mobile towers and, increasingly, grid-connected towers in these areas rely on diesel generators to power their network operations. The consumption of diesel by the telecoms sector currently stands at a staggering 3bn liters annually, second only to the railways in India.
What is the case on other developing and newly industrialized countries? I don’t actually know.
NOTE: Please note that that many figures given on the report are just estimates based on quite little actual data, so they might be somewhat off the actual figures. Given the source of the report I would quess that if the figures are off, they are most probably off to direction so that the environmental effect looks bigger than it actually is.
774 Comments
Tomi Engdahl says:
Dave Kesler “If data centers use water for cooling that means the same volume of water goes in a pipe at one end and out the other. Yes, it’s going to be some degree warmer but it doesn’t dissappear.”
There are some data centers that use the method you described. They use river/lake/sea water for cooling like that. This type of data centers are minority in USA.
Most data centers in USA do not work like that.
Old evaporative cooled data centers (those whic use lots of water) vaporize most of the water they take it. It goes to the sky where it comes back down about week later typically few hundred mails away. Same happens to water used for growing crops and when you water your lawn.
Many new data centers use closed loop cooling where pipes are filled once (few swimming pools of water) and that same water circulates on the data center for few years. After that it might need to be replaced with new water (and old water needs to be cleaned/ treated).
“Is the location such that the water can’t be used downstream for the ag land or is there another concern I’m missing?”
For the cooling method you described to work a lot of water needs to go through (practically need to be river,lake or sea) and you need permission to retuns that water somewhat hotter back.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Yes, there are data centers in and around Corpus Christi, Texas, and the area is seeing major investments in AI infrastructure.
While historically the region hosted modest telecom and regional facilities, massive hyperscale and edge facilities have recently expanded into the area.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1EQUGE4Wre/
Corpus Christi, Texas, stands on the brink of becoming the first modern American city to exhaust its municipal water supply, offering a stark global warning about the intersection of climate pressures, industrial demand, and delayed infrastructure.
Prolonged drought has left its primary reservoirs, Lake Corpus Christi and Choke Canyon, at critically low levels, often below ten percent capacity.
Officials project a Level 1 drought emergency as early as this year, defined as the point when demand exceeds supply for 180 consecutive days, with possible shortages by 2027 if rains fail to materialize.
Heavy industrial consumption compounds the problem. Petrochemical and plastics facilities, including a major joint venture plant, draw millions of gallons daily—far outstripping residential use—while supporting the region’s role as a key energy export hub.
Residential restrictions already limit outdoor watering, yet broader cuts risk economic disruption. Plans for a large seawater desalination plant remain delayed by funding and permitting hurdles, leaving limited short-term options.
This situation mirrors near-misses like Cape Town’s 2018 crisis and underscores how megadroughts, population growth, and over-allocation of resources threaten cities worldwide.
Without aggressive conservation, diversified supplies, and prioritization of essential needs, similar shortages could cascade across arid and industrial regions, disrupting economies and daily life far beyond Texas.
Source: WIRED, “The American Water Crisis Is Here” (May 2026).
Tomi Engdahl says:
By choosing closed-loop liquid cooling + dry heat exchangers over evaporative cooling, the facility protects the local municipal water supply. However, this shifts the thermal burden entirely onto electricity consumption, requiring higher fan and chiller power on hot Texas summer days—which is why securing a 1 GW dedicated grid interconnection was a prerequisite before breaking ground.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Currently, data centers account for less than 1% (estimated around 0.1% to 0.5%) of Corpus Christi’s total municipal water draw.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CD9J74MCF/
America’s largest underground water source is steadily running dry.
Reports show that the massive High Plains Aquifer, famously known as the Ogallala, is rapidly depleting. Analysts say that groundwater is currently being extracted much faster than natural rainfall can replenish it. This critical collapse across eight states threatens to eliminate the nation’s vital irrigation buffer, triggering severe crop losses and surging consumer food prices nationwide.
#photography #environment #agriculture
References:
Newsweek: The Largest US Groundwater Supply Is Running Out
Scientific American: Draining the Ogallala Aquifer and the Future of American Farming
USGS: Groundwater Depletion and Water Level Changes in the High Plains
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1BwLdwQg4V/
Amazon’s global data centers used approximately 2.5 billion gallons of water in 2025, marking the company’s first public disclosure of its total annual data center water use. That amount is roughly equivalent to 3,800 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
Across more than 900 data center facilities in over 50 countries, Amazon primarily uses outside air for cooling and relies on water-based cooling during hotter periods to keep servers operating safely. Despite expanding its infrastructure, the company reported a 2% reduction in water withdrawals at the facilities it directly owns and operates compared with 2024, citing more efficient cooling technologies and its goal of becoming water positive by 2030.
The announcement comes as governments and local communities increasingly examine the environmental impact of rapidly growing data centers. While Amazon emphasizes improvements in water efficiency, researchers and policymakers continue to highlight that water demand can place significant pressure on communities located in drought-prone or water-stressed regions, making transparency and local reporting increasingly important.
As AI and cloud computing continue to expand, discussions about balancing technological growth with responsible water management are likely to become even more important.
Images are generated by AI and for demonstration purposes only.
Source: Bhutani, A. (2026). Amazon Says Its Data Centers Used 2.5 Billion Gallons of Water in 2025. The Wall Street Journal.
#Amazon #AWS #DataCenters #ArtificialIntelligence #CloudComputing #Sustainability #WaterConservation #Technology #Environment #Climate #Innovation #fblifestyle
Tomi Engdahl says:
How Sealed Liquid Cooling WorksData systems handle water cooling by dividing the process into isolated loops:The Internal Loop (Sealed): Purified water or specialized coolant is filled into a completely airtight system just once during construction. This fluid is pumped through sealed piping directly to metal plates attached to the computer chips (direct-to-chip cooling) to absorb heat.The External Loop (Heat Rejection): The hot fluid travels to a heat exchanger or outdoor “dry coolers”. Outdoor fans blow air over the sealed radiator pipes to release the heat into the atmosphere, cooling the water back down without allowing any of it to evaporate or escape.Recirculation: The cooled liquid is pumped straight back to the servers to repeat the cycle indefinitely.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GEucNbek6/
Microsoft has reported significant water consumption associated with cooling its global network of data centres, reflecting the growing resource requirements of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
Many technology companies are now investing in advanced cooling technologies, including closed-loop systems, recycled water, liquid cooling, and air-cooled designs, to reduce freshwater use while maintaining reliable operation of high-performance computing equipment.
Improving water efficiency has become a major sustainability priority as AI computing capacity continues to expand worldwide.
#Microsoft #DataCenters #WaterConservation #ArtificialIntelligence #Sustainability
Tomi Engdahl says:
USA
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1GEucNbek6/
All these issues have answers. The technology is available to mitigate these issues. Why is our leadership at every level incompetent to be able to write rules, laws, R regulations, covenants, you name it. Where is our leaders ? Data centers didn’t just happen yesterday, or even the day before, they’ve been being built for several years now and Without any regulation, and that’s why all these problems have arisen and taken on a no, no, no attitude from all the chicken littles . After the fact is not the time to get excited or concerned , it’s before .That’s why it’s a participatory form of governance that we live under. Dah !
Tomi Engdahl says:
Nationally, U.S. golf courses use significantly more water than data centers, with golf consuming roughly 2 billion gallons per day compared to data centers’ estimated 449 million gallons per day. However, data center water use is growing rapidly due to artificial intelligence, while golf usage remains flat.
Tomi Engdahl says:
It sounds like a silver bullet—bury loops of pipe in the ground, fill them with glycol/antifreeze, and dump server heat directly into the cool earth year-round with zero water loss.
While ground-source (geothermal) loop systems work exceptionally well for homes, schools, and small commercial buildings, forcing megawatt-scale data centers to use closed-loop underground piping runs into massive physical, thermodynamic, and geological bottlenecks.
For a home or office building, ground cooling works because the heat load is seasonal. In the summer, you dump heat into the dirt; in the winter, you pull that heat back out to warm the building. The ground gets time to rest and thermally equalize.
A data center is a 24/7/365 thermal blowtorch.
Instead of burying pipes underground where heat gets trapped, modern data centers achieve zero-water cooling through two alternative methods:
Air-Assisted Dry Coolers (Radiators): Dumping heat into the outdoor atmosphere via large fan-coils. Air doesn’t get “thermally saturated” like solid rock because the wind continuously sweeps hot air away.
Waste Heat Capture (District Heating): Instead of dumping heat into the ground or air, data centers in Europe (e.g., Finland, Sweden, Denmark) funnel their hot water loops into municipal district heating grids. The servers heat local homes and tap water during winter, turning a waste problem into useful energy.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Lets all be realistic, A.I. / data centers are, and will be, a major part of our existence and a natural part of the engineering evolution of human beings going back to the “wheel” so, lets try to get it right. 1. Use liquid nitrogen. Cryogenic cooling system can be made to work for this application. 2. Use sea water. Climate scientists state the warming of the planet will soon melt the polar ice caps and coastal cities will disappear…so we better get busy finding a use for all this water. 3. If you disagree with #2, then lets build these data centers at the polar ice caps– The Arctic and Antarctica. When Quantum computing data centers come to fruition…. that will generate a massive amount of heat and will need even more cooling… also the water is maintained in closed loop systems…. one last point.. The possessive (ownership) spelling of the word “brain” depends on whether you mean one brain or more than one: brain’s for one owner, or brains’ for multiple owners. Can we drop the extra unnecessary “S” above? thanks
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Lets all be realistic, A.I. / data centers are, and will be,”
Agreed.
“1. Use liquid nitrogen. Cryogenic cooling system can be made to work for this application.”
While it is true that cryogenic systems can be made to physically circulate liquid nitrogen or run closed cryogenic refrigeration loops, claims that cryogenic cooling solves scale data center cooling ignore fundamental thermodynamics, power requirements, and hardware physics.
There is a huge difference between a system being technically engineered to function and it being viable as a primary cooling strategy for a 100 MW+ server facility.
The most common oversight with this idea is ignoring the massive energy required to produce cryogenic temperatures in the first place.
Result: Using liquid nitrogen/cryogenics as the primary cooling loop would triple or quadruple the total power consumption of a data center.
While cryogenic \text{LN}_2 cooling is completely non-viable as a primary, continuous data center cooling system, it has two legitimate niche uses:
Emergency Off-Grid Backup Cooling: If a power outage cuts electricity to primary pumps and chillers, pressurized liquid nitrogen tanks can be discharged into heat exchangers without requiring grid power. It acts as a short-term “thermal fuse” to keep critical hardware from melting while servers undergo a safe, controlled shutdown.
Quantum Computing Labs: Quantum processors (like superconducting qubits) require temperatures near absolute zero (0.015\text{ K}) to maintain quantum coherence.
(To actually run chips at cryogenic temperatures, you would need specialized Cryo-CMOS or superconducting circuits—technology currently limited to quantum computing labs, not commercial AI clusters.)
Even if a facility used an open “boil-off” system (purchasing liquid nitrogen in bulk and letting it evaporate to carry away heat):
Volumetric Supply: A single 100 MW data center would consume over 500,000 liters of liquid nitrogen every single day. The global industrial gas supply chain cannot manufacture or transport that volume to server farms continuously.
“2. Use sea water.”
Sea water can be used for cooling in several ways
“3. If you disagree with #2, then lets build these data centers at the polar ice caps– The Arctic and Antarctica.”
No need to go so far from sivilization. Cold climate in Scandinavia works well for data centers.
“also the water is maintained in closed loop systems….”
Yes.
Tomi Engdahl says:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1PaaPyVAHg/
But why should ordinary people potentially sacrifice WATER so billion-dollar corporations can keep millions of servers running?
We’re not talking about some luxury resource.
We’re talking about WATER.
The same water coming into people’s homes.
The same resource farmers depend on.
The same resource our children and grandchildren will depend on.
And depending on the cooling system, some data centers can consume substantial amounts of water, especially through evaporative cooling. On top of that, the electricity needed to operate these facilities has its own water and environmental footprint.
Then people wonder why communities are starting to ask questions.
You want me to take shorter showers.
You want people watering their lawns less.
You tell farmers they need to conserve.
You tell everybody climate change and drought mean we need to protect freshwater.
But when a corporation shows up talking about a billion-dollar data center suddenly everybody starts whispering?
HELL NO.
If water is precious when I’M using it, then water needs to be precious when CORPORATIONS are using it too.
And here’s where people need to be careful with the phrase “making the water dirty.”
Not every data center simply takes drinking water, contaminates it, and dumps poisonous water back into the environment. That’s too broad and makes the argument easier to dismiss.
The stronger argument is this:
Industrial cooling can create wastewater or concentrated discharge that has to be properly managed, while evaporative systems can consume water altogether by sending it into the atmosphere. Water treatment chemicals, mineral buildup, blowdown water and the temperature of discharged water can also create environmental-management issues depending on the facility and system.
THAT deserves scrutiny.
Because corporations shouldn’t get to privatize the benefits while communities inherit the environmental costs.
If you’re making billions from AI, then BUILD THE DAMN INFRASTRUCTURE.
Recycle your cooling water.
Use reclaimed/non-potable water wherever practical.
Invest in closed-loop systems.
Develop cooling technologies that minimize freshwater consumption.
Treat wastewater properly.
Show the public exactly how much water you’re withdrawing, how much you’re consuming, where it’s coming from, what’s being discharged and what’s in that discharge.
And if the technology required to protect the community costs more money?
GOOD. PAY FOR IT.
That’s part of doing business.
Don’t build the most technologically advanced computers humanity has ever created and then tell me the best solution you came up with for cooling them requires putting additional pressure on the same freshwater resources humans need to survive.
That’s not futuristic.
That’s primitive with a motherboard attached to it.
And don’t come into struggling communities waving jobs and tax revenue around like that means residents shouldn’t ask questions.
How many permanent jobs?
How much water?
How much electricity?
Who pays for infrastructure upgrades?
What happens during drought?
What happens if residential demand grows?
What happens to farmers?
What happens to groundwater?
Where does the wastewater go?
What chemicals are being used?
Who’s testing the discharge?
Who’s monitoring the aquifer?
And most importantly:
WHO GETS PRIORITY IF THERE ISN’T ENOUGH WATER?
Because THAT is the conversation communities should be having BEFORE these facilities are built.
I support technology.
I support AI.
I support innovation.
But I don’t support treating communities like sacrifice zones so some of the richest corporations on Earth can build infrastructure as cheaply as possible.
If you’re building a $1 BILLION facility, don’t tell a working-class community that protecting its water supply is somehow too expensive.
Find another cooling method.
Build better treatment infrastructure.
Recycle the water.
Use reclaimed water.
Spend the money.
FIGURE IT OUT.
You’re literally building ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.
Use some intelligence.
Because technological advancement that destroys or unnecessarily strains the natural resources keeping human beings alive isn’t advancement.
It’s exploitation dressed up as innovation.
And there needs to be one rule that doesn’t change whether you’re talking about a homeowner, farmer, factory or trillion-dollar technology corporation:
PEOPLE SHOULD NEVER HAVE TO COMPETE WITH COMPUTERS FOR CLEAN WATER.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The US has had major data centers for 30+ years now.
uhh we’ve had them for over 80 years. So yeah we needed them before. If you really cared that much you wouldn’t be on facebook.
Tomi Engdahl says:
The transition of data centers into major water consumers—and their subsequent shift toward closed-loop systems—followed two distinct phases driven by thermodynamics, power costs, and AI hardware density.
Phase 1: Why & When Data Centers Chose High Water Usage (2006–2020)
In the early days of corporate IT (1990s–early 2000s), small server rooms relied almost entirely on mechanical air chillers. While air cooling consumed no water, it consumed vast amounts of electricity.
The Shift to Water (2006–2010)
As cloud computing exploded, tech giants began constructing massive “hyperscale” facilities. To cut electricity bills and improve energy metrics, operators turned to open-loop evaporative cooling towers and direct evaporative air systems.
The Physics Advantage: Evaporating water absorbs thermal energy far more efficiently than blowing dry air. Evaporating a single gallon of water removes roughly 8,000\text{ BTUs} of heat.
The Result: Between 2007 and 2020, water-intensive cooling became the global gold standard for hyperscalers. Facilities in Oregon, Iowa, Virginia, and Georgia each began drawing 1 to 5 million gallons of freshwater daily to evaporate heat into steam.
Phase 2: When & Why the Trend Shifted to Closed-Loop Systems (2021–2026)
The preference shifted away from open-loop evaporation toward closed-loop liquid cooling in two stages between 2021 and 2026.
Step 1: Community Backlash & Water-Positive Pledges (2020–2022)
Around 2020–2022, severe droughts in the U.S. West and Europe triggered intense local political pushback against multi-million-gallon daily water permits.
Step 2: The AI Heat Density Wall (2024–2026)
The rapid deployment of generative AI GPUs (such as NVIDIA Blackwell arrays) rendered open-loop air/evaporative cooling physically obsolete for new builds:
Heat Density Spike: Legacy cloud server racks drew 5\text{–}15\text{ kW} of power. Modern AI server racks draw 40\text{–}100+\text{ kW}, generating heat levels too intense to dissipate with evaporative air streams.
Closed-Loop Standardization: Between 2024 and 2026, hyperscalers (Microsoft, Oracle, Meta, AWS) standardized on closed-loop direct-to-chip liquid cooling and dielectric immersion tanks.
Zero Evaporative Loss: Fluid circulates through sealed copper cold plates or tanks, absorbs component heat, passes through a closed heat exchanger, and recirculates endlessly. Once filled during construction, these systems consume near-zero ongoing water.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Terry Barger
Claim 1: “Water vapor is a hazard / cause of global warming”
The Reality on Global Warming: Water vapor (H2O) is technically a greenhouse gas, but it does not drive global warming on its own.
Why It Works Differently: Carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH) stay in the atmosphere for decades to centuries. Water vapor, however, has a very short residence time in the atmosphere (around 9 to 10 days) before falling out naturally as rain or snow via the hydrologic cycle.
Claim 2: “Hydrogen is what about 90% of AI data centers use for power”
The Reality on Data Center Power: 0% (or effectively near zero) of standard AI data center operations run on hydrogen as their main power source.
What Data Centers Actually Use: Data centers draw power directly from local electrical grids, which are fed by a mix of natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar, wind, and hydro.
Where Hydrogen Fits In: Tech companies are experimenting with hydrogen fuel cells strictly as backup generators (to replace emergency diesel generators) or for small-scale pilot projects.
Tomi Engdahl says:
“Millions of gallons of water used when water is drying up faster than it is replenished.”
Water is drying up faster than it is replenished is a true situation in many parts of USA. Data centers in USA make a tiny part in increasing this problem overall. Data centers use around 0.2% of the water overall in USA.
…where that 0.2% macro-statistic completely masks severe local crises.
While it is statistically true that data centers account for a tiny fraction of national freshwater consumption—dwarfed by agriculture (~40%) and thermoelectric power generation (~40%)—water stress is never experienced at a national average. Water is hyper-local, and the localized impact of data center operations creates major friction for three main reasons:
1. The “Straw in a Small Cup” Problem
A single hyperscale data center using evaporative cooling can consume 1 to 5 million gallons of water per day—roughly the daily water usage of a town with 10,000 to 50,000 residents.
When a multi-building cluster lands in a rural or suburban county, it isn’t pulling from a national water supply; it is tapping into a single local aquifer or municipal watershed. In smaller utility basins, one facility can instantly become the single largest water consumer in the entire county.
2. Geographic Clustering in Drought Zones
Data center developers traditionally select sites based on cheap power, fast fiber access, low land costs, and tax incentives—not water availability. As a result, hundreds of facilities have been built in inherently dry or drought-stricken region.
The American Southwest (Arizona, Utah, West Texas): Facilities in places like Mesa, Arizona, or Pecos County, Texas, draw millions of gallons of groundwater from severely depleted desert aquifers.
Georgia & South Carolina: Rapid expansion in the Southeast has put data centers in direct competition with local agriculture for surface water during summer heatwaves.
Northern Virginia: In Loudoun and Prince William counties (which host over 300 data centers), annual water withdrawals for cooling spiked into billions of gallons, straining regional river basins.
3. Consumptive Loss vs. Recirculated Use
When a household or standard commercial building uses water, most of it goes down the drain, travels to a municipal wastewater plant, and is treated and returned to the local river or aquifer.
In contrast, evaporative data center cooling is almost 100% consumptive loss. The water is sprayed over cooling coils and evaporated into the atmosphere as steam. That water is lost from the local watershed entirely, meaning it never flows back into local wells or downstream reservoirs.
While data centers are not the primary driver of national water depletion, placing a high-consumption evaporative facility inside a drought-stressed local water basin creates an immediate tug-of-war between tech operations, local farming, and residential drinking water supplies.
Check out Why data centers are eating up enormous water resources
https://youtu.be/cl1ctf1_JxE?is=uwWsXMruVSISdjw5
Tomi Engdahl says:
Bitch all you want, but you’re gonna LOSE this battle!!!
AI is here to stay, and, will only get bigger, better and stronger.
We (US) need this technology for National Security, and the incredible possibilities and advancements in the our overall healthcare system.
Too, we (US) MUST stay ahead of ALL our enemies in this endeavor.
AI and drones…futuristic shit, but it’s HERE, and we need to regulate it.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Across the United States, golf courses consume vastly more water nationally than data centers—roughly 5 to 10 times as much on an aggregate national basis.
However, the way they use that water, where they draw it from, and how it impacts local communities differ significantly.
Tomi Engdahl says:
Jonathan Moedt yeah designing a mechanical system for a data center is not super complex, but it’s way more complex to the lay men who’s not trained to do it.
So they come up with all these crazy assumptions and idea ideas about how it works and have decided that data centers are going to drain us of all of our water
Erin Brockovich was just on Theo Von and I was disgusted listening to her talk about data center water usage like she knew what she was talking about and everybody was just gobbling that up.
It just pisses me off.
Spoiler: we’ve been using closed loop in our designs for a very long time and it has been the preferred and extremely popular use for at least the past eight years
Matt Corbitt most people have been fed a lie….. maybe the old ones worked like steam engines, but the new ones are similar to the radiator in a car.
Jonathan Moedt to be clear I said “Gallons” not liters. All the data centers in the uk alone that are not closed loop or air/ gas cooled use around 680 million “liters” every day. That is more then all the cattle drink daily in the uk. Which to me is a massive amount of water. For me I would get rid of them all and have this conversation in the pub. Even though I have to have a smart phone to exist and work in the world today, it’s not needed and all by design. I would happily ditch my smart phone and laptop if I had one and go back to paper and managing our forest plantations which we don’t anymore. Also, you say rivers. All the data centers (that use it) take there water from reservoirs which are not getting filled by rivers or rain as it all comes in winter these days. Yes they need to catch more rain in winter but that is not happening any time soon.
Matt Corbitt I helped build 2 in the Netherlands in the past 3 years that are not closed loop the smaller one uses 300,000 gallons of fresh water every day and the other one is 3 times the size. There are 520+ data centers in the UK together they use around 170 million gallons of fresh water every single day. Only about 180 of these are closed loop and each of these use around 100,000 gallons a year so not truly closed loop. Everyone needs to wake up to what is going on like yesterday as they all need to be shut down. There are over 100 more data centers planned to be built in the uk alone in the next 2 years and only a handful of these will be closed loop.
Jonathan Moedt I helped build 2 in the Netherlands in the past 3 years that are not closed loop the smaller one uses 300,000 gallons of fresh water every day and the other one is 3 times the size. Out of the 520+ data centers together they use around 170 million gallons of fresh water a day. Only about 180 of these are closed loop and they still use around 100,000 gallons a year so not truly closed loop. Everyone needs to wake up to what is going on like yesterday as they all need to be shut down. There are over 100 more data centers planned to be built in the uk in the next 2 years and only a handful will be closed loop.
Source: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F9zPMPNzA/
Tomi Engdahl says:
Out of all the water on Earth, less than 1% is naturally accessible, fresh, and safe (or easily treatable) for humans to drink.
Key Data Points
97.5% is Salt Water: Oceans, gulfs, and saline seas contain almost all the water on Earth—completely undrinkable without energy-intensive desalination.
2.5% is Fresh Water: This is the total amount of non-saline water on Earth.
Most Fresh Water is Locked Up:
~68.7% is frozen solid in ice sheets, glaciers, and permafrost (mostly in Antarctica and Greenland).
~30.1% is buried underground as groundwater—much of it too deep, polluted, or expensive to pump out.
The Final “Drinkable” Slice (~0.5%–0.8%): Only about 1.2% of all fresh water exists on the surface in lakes, rivers, and swamps.