The AI ​​boom is driving demand for data centers, thereby driving up water consumption. (Water is used to chill the pc equipment in data centers.) After According to the FT, in Virginia – home to the world's largest concentration of knowledge centers – water consumption increased by nearly two-thirds between 2019 and 2023, from 1.13 billion gallons to 1.85 billion gallons.
Many say the worldwide trend is unsustainable. Microsoft, a serious data center operator, says 42% of the water it utilized in 2023 got here from “water-stressed areas.” Google, which is considered one of the biggest data center operators, said this yr that 15% of its freshwater withdrawals got here from “highly water-stressed” areas.
Why can't data centers recycle their water in a closed loop system? Many do, but much of the water used is retained for humidity control, meaning it evaporates. Especially in drier regions, unhumidified air can grow to be a powerful conductor of static electricity, which will likely be bad for computers.
