> noted that it would be harder to reach its internal target if its calculations included “secondary” use—water used in generating the electricity to power its data centres, according to the document.
Ok, when we're considering how much water a person uses, are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Because agriculture is going to dwarf anything that data centers use.
Tangential to the point, I think we should be careful about the almond talking point. Insofar as it is used for milk, almond milk uses almost half as much water as dairy milk, uses 1/18 the land and emits 1/5 the amount of carbon. As food, it is eaten in such a vanishingly small quantity compared to other water-hungry foods (meat) as to be insignificant. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/environmental-footprint-m...
The water use actually isn't all that high - it's just easy to make "a million gallons of water every year" sound like a lot, but compared to a 500 acre farm which could easily use 3 million gallons every day, it's not very big.
The electricity use is really substantial though, but that's harder for people to visualise so gets less media attention.
Not necessarily because if you have a closed loop system then that vastly decreases the amount of water usage and increases the amount of electricity (the water has to be cooled)
> pretty close proxy for how much computation is happening.
[citation needed]. See the vastly different power budget and cost of AWS graviton ARM vs x86 compute. Looking even at power use directly is only going to give a very low precision proxy for aggregate compute, with water usage even more indirect.
Counterpoint: you have no factual basis for believing anything about the energy used by various CPUs in EC2, none of which are publicly available parts.
Water use is not necessarily linked with energy use. Open up Google's annual environmental report and look at the water consumption for each facility. Unrelated to the size/power of those sites.
It should be inconsequential. Sometimes it isn't. If you're pumping water from an aquifer in the desert for evaporative cooling, that's highly consequential.
Unfortunately, media sound bites can't distinguish meaningless water usage from meaningful usage.
The water usage for these new numbers of power consumption, in the GW range, is thousands of tonnes per day (if my maths is right haha). It's a HUGE amount of water.
Useage is one issue and should be monitored, but I think you have to understand that in some cases the tech company purchases the water supply and towns become dependant or placed at will of the tech company's interest. On top of that, there is a cost increase to utilities even if the water is moving around a closed loop.
I am assuming the 7.7 billion gallons(29b liters) a year is all surface water. It better be. It would be hideously irresponsible to use any ground water for cooling their data centers.
> Or do data centers use evaporative cooling just like power plants?
Yes. Not always, but evaporative cooling is much more energy efficient than heat exchange to outside air.
That said, stories about data center water use are a distraction from much bigger water consumers like golf courses and agriculture (e.g. to ship alfalfa to the middle east).
The problem with data center water usage is that it is unnecessary from the PR point of view. Data centers can run on air cooling just as good, but more expensive. For all I know, we could also do just as good without data centers, like we did 20 years ago.
With agriculture, water usage is necessary as eating is not something optional and everyone needs to eat to survive. From the PR point of view, of course. We couldn't live without agriculture, as we had agriculture 20 years ago too.
Golf courses are unrelated as they don't use nearly as much water as agriculture or data centers.
PR is everything, the narrative is what makes the difference. There is a lot of hypocrisy in this field, which is why I try to avoid it, but there is also some truth in it - we really didn't need that many data centers 20 years ago.
> Data centers can run on air cooling just as good, but more expensive
"More expensive" means spending more on air conditioning. Ergo more electricity used, higher electricity demand, more natural gas burned and carbon emissions, higher consumer power prices. So a different kind of PR disaster.
> That said stories about data center water use are a distraction from much bigger water consumers
That's something of a fallacy of relative privation. When water is scarce, all frivolous uses should be under scrutiny. The others you mention have been well-known for a long time. The current stories simply highlight a new consumer people haven't thought of before.
Also - Will data center water usage remain "negligible" if AI succeeds at wide adoption and scales to 100x current deployment? If 100x current usage levels become a concern, I don't know why people pretend that current usage is not a concern for a tech that many of those same people are projecting to scale.
While technically true, if your datacenter is in Phoenix and you just consumed a few acre feet of water to raise the relative humidity by 0.000001%, for all intents and purposes that was a massive waste of water.
> Where does the water go? If they simply take in cold water and release hot water, that water is still available for other uses.
Well, first you need to cool it down in a way that's good for the environment, I presume. You should not pour down hot water in a cold river with all its fishes and plants.
Why do companies actively lie in their advertising about being eco-friendly, instead of just keeping a low profile?
Is it because we tend to focus only on current events and quickly forget their past track record? Indeed, if people soon forget the lies, the risk is minimal.
One reason is that large institutional investors or lenders enforce certain agendas by only giving money to companies that meet certain criteria. Thus companies will posture themselves as meeting those qualities to attract money and investment.
It’s an explanation of why so many companies suddenly appeared to go “woke”, or why they did a complete 180 when the political climate changed. Even powerful companies like Apple must grovel for favor.
This isn't really about using water as much as dealing with all of the heat that comes out of computation. The water is just the simplest way to dispose of the heat.
Isn't there some better way we can, perhaps, turn some of the heat back into something useful? Maybe heat a building? Or turn it back into electricity. It doesn't have to be an efficient conversion because it's now 100% wasted.
Ok, when we're considering how much water a person uses, are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Because agriculture is going to dwarf anything that data centers use.
It feels reasonable that we should have the same detail of information for data centers.
Beef too. It uses the same amount of water but people eat 30x as much annually.
I can totally see why a company wants to keep this info secret.
Competitors would really like to know.
The electricity use is really substantial though, but that's harder for people to visualise so gets less media attention.
Water use for all of AI is inconsequential compared to agriculture.
In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around.
Energy is the important input.
Unfortunately, media sound bites can't distinguish meaningless water usage from meaningful usage.
Where does the water go? If they simply take in cold water and release hot water, that water is still available for other uses.
Or do data centers use evaporative cooling just like power plants?
Yes. Not always, but evaporative cooling is much more energy efficient than heat exchange to outside air.
That said, stories about data center water use are a distraction from much bigger water consumers like golf courses and agriculture (e.g. to ship alfalfa to the middle east).
With agriculture, water usage is necessary as eating is not something optional and everyone needs to eat to survive. From the PR point of view, of course. We couldn't live without agriculture, as we had agriculture 20 years ago too.
Golf courses are unrelated as they don't use nearly as much water as agriculture or data centers.
PR is everything, the narrative is what makes the difference. There is a lot of hypocrisy in this field, which is why I try to avoid it, but there is also some truth in it - we really didn't need that many data centers 20 years ago.
"More expensive" means spending more on air conditioning. Ergo more electricity used, higher electricity demand, more natural gas burned and carbon emissions, higher consumer power prices. So a different kind of PR disaster.
That's something of a fallacy of relative privation. When water is scarce, all frivolous uses should be under scrutiny. The others you mention have been well-known for a long time. The current stories simply highlight a new consumer people haven't thought of before.
Well, first you need to cool it down in a way that's good for the environment, I presume. You should not pour down hot water in a cold river with all its fishes and plants.
You could spend more electricity if needed to up the airflow to get the same cooling power without humidifying.
It’s an explanation of why so many companies suddenly appeared to go “woke”, or why they did a complete 180 when the political climate changed. Even powerful companies like Apple must grovel for favor.
Isn't there some better way we can, perhaps, turn some of the heat back into something useful? Maybe heat a building? Or turn it back into electricity. It doesn't have to be an efficient conversion because it's now 100% wasted.