Comments on: Green code and green IT

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 17:30:29 +0000

Some data centers use huge amount of water, some use practically no water. It depends how it is designed and where it is built.
Google, Meta and Microsoft all have all big data centers that consume practically no water in operation outside USA.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 14:57:10 +0000

excess heat from data centers to district heating is used/being built on other cities in Finland: Espoo, Hamina, Helsinki, Lahti, Kirkkonummi, Mäntsälä
Microsoft data center project in Espoo will be biggest data center heat recovery project when ready (already supplies considerable amount of heat)

Lynn Cooks here is some info on Google Hamina
https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/around-the-globe/google-europe/our-first-offsite-heat-recovery-project-lands-in-finland/

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 13:44:50 +0000

“Once water is used, it is contaminated.”
The localized burden on freshwater reserves remains one of the largest criticism points of the digital infrastructure boom.
In standard evaporative cooling towers, water never touches electronic circuit boards or heavy metals. It circulates through heat exchangers to absorb heat from the air or closed coolant loops, then evaporates as steam into the atmosphere.
Around 80% to 90% of the water drawn for evaporative cooling is lost to the air as pure steam/vapor (which contains zero contaminants, leaving the local watershed entirely).
The remaining 10% to 20% of the water becomes heavily concentrated with naturally occurring minerals (like calcium and magnesium) left behind by evaporation, along with anti-scaling, anti-corrosion, or anti-microbial additives (like chlorine or biocides).
Data centers are not legally permitted to inject dirty cooling wastewater back into underground aquifers.
Blowdown water is sent directly to municipal wastewater treatment facilities or treated on-site before being discharged into surface waterways under strict Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits.
Direct Groundwater Risks: The main risk of contamination to groundwater wells comes from secondary facility sources—such as potential leaks or spills from massive on-site diesel generator fuel tanks used for backup power—rather than the cooling water itself.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 11:17:32 +0000

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1jiAK1fuW8/

Jeff Bezos has drawn attention to an increasingly discussed challenge surrounding artificial intelligence: the enormous amount of water required to cool the powerful data centers that run advanced AI systems. As AI adoption accelerates worldwide, experts have warned that the infrastructure supporting these technologies could place additional pressure on local water supplies in certain regions.

Modern AI models require massive computing resources, and many facilities depend on water-based cooling systems to prevent servers from overheating. Researchers have increasingly examined how expanding AI infrastructure may affect energy consumption, environmental sustainability, and access to natural resources.

The discussion has prompted calls for greater investment in more efficient cooling technologies and environmentally responsible data center designs. While artificial intelligence promises major advances across industries, many experts believe long-term growth will also require careful planning to reduce its environmental footprint. Balancing technological progress with sustainable resource management is expected to remain an important challenge in the years ahead.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Sat, 18 Jul 2026 11:02:20 +0000

pollution is much much less than other industries. If data centers are only responsible for around 2% of the national footprint, why are they dominating the environmental news cycle?
Historically, aviation has been viewed as a primary climate villain, while data centers were seen as a green alternative to physical travel. However, with the explosion of generative AI and cloud computing, that gap is closing rapidly.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Mon, 13 Jul 2026 10:59:55 +0000

Sheer volumes of drinking water is used to cool data centers in USA, while data centers in other countries are a built so that that they use much less water or barely any water. The average water consumption in European data centers are a fraction of what USA data centers use (per kWh of power consumption).
For rxamplr Finland average is 25 times less water than data centers in USA (per kWh) while there is so shortage of water availability here. Finland is famously known as the “Land of a Thousand Lakes”, but this nickname is actually an understatement. On winter time a lot of cooling waste energy is reused to keep houses warm: Microsoft data center gives around 40% of heat to Espoo district heating system. Google Hamina data center heats 80% of the city.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Thu, 09 Jul 2026 11:42:44 +0000

Many modular units use direct-to-chip or immersion liquid cooling. Because the system is a tightly sealed, closed loop, the liquid recirculates indefinitely. This eliminates the need for massive evaporative cooling towers, slashing on-site freshwater consumption to near zero.
For modules that do use air, the airflow architecture is optimized.
Modular data centers could be in theory deployed exactly where the heat is needed. The modules can be built to capture the server exhaust heat directly from its sealed cooling loop and pumps it straight into the local water grid to heat buildings in cold climate locations.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 11:05:36 +0000

Google Hamina data center in Finland uses Zero Fresh Water for Cooling. The data center captures its excess server heat and pumps it directly into the city’s district heating network and excess goes into the Baltic Sea water.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:59:25 +0000

The entire direct water footprint of all US data centers combined is equal to about 80 average-sized irrigated crop farms (like a standard corn or soybean operation in the Midwest).
The direct water consumption of the entire US data center industry could be matched by just 7 or 8 massive industrial crop farms in places like California’s Central Valley or the Texas Panhandle.
The US data center footprint is equivalent to roughly 6,000 to 8,000 non-irrigated family farms.
Agriculture accounts for nearly 40% of all water withdrawals in the United States, whereas data center cooling accounts for just 0.01% (US data centers directly consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water annually).
The takeaway: If you took the water used by just one large agricultural county in California or Arizona, it would easily match or exceed the direct cooling water consumed by every single data center in the United States combined.

By: Tomi Engdahl

Tomi Engdahl — Wed, 08 Jul 2026 10:52:04 +0000

When looking at the numbers, comparing data center water consumption to total US water usage reveals a stark reality: nationwide, data centers are a drop in the bucket, but locally, they can act like a giant straw. On a macro level, all US data centers combined consume less water than the nation’s golf courses or the irrigation of a few large agricultural counties. Two-thirds of new data centers built since 2022 are located in regions already classified as water-stressed.
The total picture changes drastically depending on whether you look at direct water (used on-site for evaporative cooling) or indirect water (the massive amount of water consumed off-site by power plants generating electricity for the servers).
In places like Phoenix, Arizona or West Texas, adding a multi-gigawatt data center campus places immense pressure on local aquifers and municipal drinking water supplies.
Water-cooled facilities are highly energy-efficient but consume a lot water. Air-cooled facilities save water entirely but draw significantly more electricity, driving up power bills and indirect water consumption at the regional power plant.