Data Center Operators Are Trying to Fix Their Water Usage Problems

Monday, SpaceX his was changed public offering for the first time state that water conditions—including water scarcity, water regulations, and drought—can hinder the development of data centers.

It is not the only technology company that is trying to assess the impact of water scarcity on its business. Water use appears to be one of them the most complex data center. The latest Gallup research found that seven out of 10 Americans are against the development of the data center, with the lack of water as the most concerned. In the face of fierce resistance, some tech companies are rushing to convince the public that they are up to the challenge.

Data centers use water to cool servers, which dissipates a lot of heat. One popular method, called evaporative cooling, uses fresh water to absorb heat, which is then pumped to cooling towers where it is released outside.

Using more water can save money and reduce emissions for large tech companies by reducing cooling energy that relies on energy-intensive pumps to recirculate water. But it can also come with big water: Google’s facility in Council Bluffs, Iowa, for example, which uses water cooling, to be eaten more than 1 billion gallons in 2024.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory he predicted in a 2024 report that hyperscale data centers could consume 33 billion gallons of water by 2030 if they rely heavily on water cooling. It is less or less than other industries that are thirsty, such as agriculture or oil and gas – one. well broken they can use 1.5 to 16 million liters of water—but they pose a threat to areas that don’t already have water. The risk is particularly acute in the summer, when data center cooling needs peak at the same time as city water use.

“Water is a very local and regional issue,” said Shaolei Ren, an engineering professor at UC Riverside. “It’s a limited resource, and we have to manage it very carefully.”

Other tech giants, including Microsoft, OpenAI, and Oracle, have announced in recent months that they are moving away from water cooling to conserve water. This includes a major expansion of OpenAI and Oracle at Stargate in several states, including the water-rich state of Texas.

Google is taking a different approach. On Wednesday, the company made water-related commitments to regions with data centers, along with funding announcements for water-related projects in the US.

It also includes pledges to add more freshwater than the company uses, through local water businesses; increasing the use of reclaimed and recycled water; and disclose annual water usage in data centers. (Other tech companies, including Microsoft, have similar promises about water recycling and local investment. Google has been working on many of these promises for several years.) There is also a promise to use a “data-driven benchmark” to decide which data center designs will work best for local environments.

Ben Townsend, global head of architecture and sustainability at Google, says data center design is more complicated than just swearing by one type of cooling all the time. The company, he says, has been carefully evaluating its facilities for the past four years to determine which types of coolers will work best.

He said: “In some areas there is little water and in other areas it is abundant. “One method alone does not work.”

In April, Google he defended water cooling of areas that are called “abundant” water by writing to the European Union if it is necessary to create a permanent database. Google’s arguments are in line with a new study from Ren and his team, who found that if all data centers in the US adopted some type of water cooling during peak demand, they could free up 10 to 30 gigawatts of power. In areas where the grids have power but water is not available, the use of water cooling can provide guidance in efforts to reduce load.