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Will Data Centers Exacerbate Our Droughts? (nbcnews.com) 86

Posted by EditorDavid from the water-for-clouds dept.
A data center can easily use up to 1.25 million gallons of water each day — and "More data centers are being built every day by some of America's largest technology companies," reports NBC News, "including Amazon, Microsoft and Google and used by millions of customers." Almost 40 percent of them are in the United States, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft account for more than half of the total. The U.S. also has at least 1,800 "colocation" data centers, warehouses filled with a variety of smaller companies' server hardware that share the same cooling system, electricity and security, according to Data Center Map. They are typically smaller than hyperscale data centers but, research has shown, more resource intensive as they maintain a variety of computer systems operating at different levels of efficiency.

Many data center operators are drawn to water-starved regions in the West, in part due to the availability of solar and wind energy. Researchers at Virginia Tech estimate that one-fifth of data centers draw water from moderately to highly stressed watersheds, mostly in the Western United States, according to a paper published in April...

The growth in the industry shows no signs of slowing. The research company Gartner predicts that spending on global data center infrastructure will reach $200 billion this year, an increase of 6 percent from 2020, followed by 3-4 percent annually over the next three years. This growth comes at a time of record temperatures and drought in the United States, particularly in the West. "The typical data center uses about 3-5 million gallons of water per day — the same amount of water as a city of 30,000-50,000 people," said Venkatesh Uddameri, professor and director of the Water Resources Center at Texas Tech University. Although these data centers have become much more energy and water efficient over the last decade, and don't use as much water as other industries such as agriculture, this level of water use can still create potential competition with local communities over the water supply in areas where water is scarce, he added...

Sergio Loureiro, vice president of core operations for Microsoft, said that the company has pledged to be "water positive" by 2030, which means it plans to replenish more water than it consumes globally. This includes reducing the company's water use and investing in community replenishment and conservation projects near where it builds facilities.

Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
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Will Data Centers Exacerbate Our Droughts? More

Will Data Centers Exacerbate Our Droughts?

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  • A data center can easily use up to 1.25 million gallons of water each day

    This reminds me of Azimov's mockery of politicians in "The Way of the Martians"... But, at least, in that book some water was really leaving Earth, whereas in this case it all states planet-bound.

    • Thing is chip fabs use a lot of water as well. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

      • Thing is chip fabs use a lot of water as well.

        No, they really don't.

        1.25 M gallons (from TFA) is about 4 acre-feet. That is the water needed by a small cornfield or a very tiny almond orchard.

        Compared to their economic benefit in jobs and services, the water used by a chip fab or a data center is negligible.

        If you want to conserve water, there are the three areas where you need to focus:
        1. Agriculture
        2. Agriculture
        3. Agriculture

        Nothing else matters.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

          Almonds, Beef, Nestle.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          1. Agriculture
          2. Agriculture
          3. Agriculture

          Nothing else matters.

          That's fine if we are growing things that we actually need.

          But, California uses hundreds of billions of gallon of water every year just to grow almonds. And most of the almonds are exported. Nobody is going to starve or die if we no longer have almonds, so we are wasting massive amounts of water just so a handful of companies can make money selling almonds.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          If you want to conserve water, there are the three areas where you need to focus:
          1. Agriculture
          2. Agriculture
          3. Agriculture

          Nothing else matters.

          Only in some states. Not all. Many states, particularly as you go east grow crops solely under rain. Other states irrigate mostly from aquifers, which are depleting at a rapid rate. And of course the Colorado river basin is entirely diverted to agricultural use, and with the years of drought, is disappearing. I guess the real elephant in the room isn't agricult

        • Fish farms. In the last 20 years, fish farms have grown to account for 9% of water being drawn from lake Meade. All cities combined account for 6%. Bulk water from lake Meade costs $1/acre-foot. So 1.25M gallons is just $4 worth of water in this part of the country. If we want water to be treated as being more precious than this, we should raise the price for bulk water.
      • Water is a vital resource, that is exploited. Not just data centers. Take interest in this topic it is very important. There are a few Golden Fleece candidates that should be called out , but data centers relative to other use should be considered and pricing set accordingly. There are many other sites that cover in depth.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      It's contaminated to the point where it's not drinkable or even suitable for watering plants. Making clean water isn't an easy thing. We've all grown up with the infrastructure to have an unlimited supply of water in our homes so we've all forgotten that. Like children we take everything for granted.

      • Here we research a claim, made a poster calling himself "rsilvergun" on a web-site called Slashdot:

        It's contaminated to the point where it's not drinkable or even suitable for watering plants

        Notably, the article, under which the claim was made, is making no such assertions itself. Moreover, people quoted in it state that in some cases the water was never drinkable to begin with:

        Google’s Demasi said that the company cooled its data centers using seawater in Finland, industrial canal water in Belgium and recycled wastewater in the United States, at its site in Douglas County, Georgia.

        It is also unclear, what the alleged contaminants could be even in theory, if the liquid is used simply for heat-dissipation.

        We rate rsilvergun's claim "Mostly False" and assign it "Four Pinocchios".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      There is limited water flow. There is limited fresh water. There is limited potable water. If the belief is that any water is good enough, your water bill should be zero. Set up cisterns, bags collected water, as reuse whatever water you have supplementing with rain.

      But there is some truth for data centers. The net use of water for cooling should be zero. The centers, for instance, can be set up next to rivers, as many building are. Water enters, is used to cool, go through heat exchangers to return to ai

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hazem ( 472289 )

        The net use of water for cooling should be zero.

        The problem is they aren't cooling thing by running water over it, thus heating the water a bit. They're using evaporative coolers, so pretty much all the water gets evaporated in the process.

        It's a lot like the "Swamp Coolers" that are common in hot non-humid places... they work well and have few moving parts... you just need a fan, some mesh-filters, and a small pump to put water into the meshes.

        Water enters, is used to cool, go through heat exchangers to return to air temperature, and is returned to the river.

        Regulations these days often require that the water be returned to the water temperature of the river and not

      • Returning water to a river warmer than you extracted it is also problematic for organisms that live in that river, or so I've read.

    • And where does that 1.25 million gallons of water go? (Hint, the vast, vast majority of it returns to the local water table.)

  • Please forgive my ignorance here.. is the water "used" to provide evaporative cooling or is it something else?

    • It's two two chains [iop.org] in from the story.

      Large amounts of water are also required to operate data centers, both directly for liquid cooling and indirectly to produce electricity.

      • It's two two chains [iop.org] in from the story.

        Large amounts of water are also required to operate data centers, both directly for liquid cooling and indirectly to produce electricity.

        Ya, but that water used for cooling and generating electricity doesn't simply disappear or become polluted and/or unusable for other purposes -- right?

        • Ya, but that water used for cooling and generating electricity doesn't simply disappear or become polluted and/or unusable for other purposes -- right?

          Water used for evaporative cooling evaporates, making the air more humid, and flies away in the wind. It eventually comes back as rain. But it does so far, far, away from where it did the cooling.

          Similarly for the water used for cooling the heat-engine type power plants. It is either returned to the watershed hotter than it was when extracted (not normally

          • It is either returned to the watershed hotter than it was when extracted (not normally done anymore due to environmental regulations to prevent thermal shock to spawning fish) ...

            Correction: It's still done quite a bit, but mostly in ways that don't expose river fish to swimming through or being dragged through a sudden termperature change. Warm ponds that release warmer water slowly into a cooler body of water and let water critters move through the temperature change at their own pace and choice can act

        • How do you "use water" to generate electricity? Is there a paddle wheel on the side of the SATA center that spins based on water rushing the data center - cause, you know, most data centers are built in water-deprived areas...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by PPH ( 736903 )

        Liquid cooling: Mostly the water lost to evaporative systems. This would seem to be the most problematic, as the water is needed at the data center site.

        Electricity production: This varies quite a bit. First, power generation can be sited remotely from the load. And water scarcity is an input into siting decisions. Type of generation is also an issue. Hydroelectric plants don't use much water (some to evaporation). But they are inevitably sited where water supply is plentiful. Thermal plants need make up w

    • Please forgive my ignorance here.. is the water "used" to provide evaporative cooling or is it something else?

      Nearly all the water is used for evaporative cooling.

      Some water is also used to flush toilets.

  • Design for salt water cooling (Score:4, Interesting)

    by spiritplumber ( 1944222 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @03:52PM (#61502026) Homepage
    Design for salt water cooling. It's not even particularly difficult, people who design boat engines do that all the time.

    • Firstly, some are already doing it, secondly it is significantly more difficult to do and those people designing boat engines would no doubt greatly prefer to not have sea water on their already long list of technical design challenges.

      There's a reason that industrial cooling systems not only prefer fresh water, but often include a shitton of water treatment as part of the process.

    • Boat engine coolant passages are large and coarse, which computer coolant passages are much narrower hence far more easily blocked by corrosion. Salt water is amazingly nasty and inexorably destroys marine cooling systems too (ships are as disposable as trucks or rail cars).

      Data centers could use closed-circuit cooling easily and the only arguments for wasting water are economic which means they can be disregarded in favor of waste reduction.

      • I doubt spring water flows directly inside cpu coolers anyway. Datacenters already have a closed loop that goes through some heat exchanger. Simply design that heat exchanger to work with salt water. They can use the heat the evaporate dirty water or salt water and collect back some of the clean condensate. Occasionally they will have to scrape off some dirt or salt.
  • It's that when it comes down to deciding whether we all get to take showers or a multi-billion dollar corporation gets water who do you think is going to win? Eventually the working class will be forced to ration water in America just like they are around the world. If you want to change that now is the time to change who you keep voting for. Those of you who need to make that change know who you are.

    And for Pete's sake vote in your primary election. It doesn't do any good if you're choosing between a g

    • You post 100 times more than the average Slashdotter, and 99% of it is political shitposting. YOU are the problem.

    • Eventually the working class will be forced to ration water in America just like they are around the world

      RSilvergun is appealing to the unwashed masses. Literally...

      Evidently, he didn't bother to check with whoever sold him this demagoguery, why are people not washing as much as they'd like "around the world" — leaving the Communist-leaning idiot with the unfortunate impression, that those other places have too many — more than the US does — million-dollar corporations in general and data

    • If you want to change that now is the time to change who you keep voting for.

      Curious:

      Who builds the big 'mega' data centers? Big Tech?

      Who does Big Tech support? Democrats?

      So who is it we're supposed to change our vote to again?

      • I vote we send rsilvergun to Cuba. They would love his anecdotes about class warfare. He'd be a superstar there, and he will no longer be surrounded by what he hates the most: corporations. Everybody wins!

  • That's a lot of people (Score:5, Interesting)

    by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Saturday June 19, 2021 @04:10PM (#61502078)

    So, 1800 data centers that use water at the same rate as 30-50k people. Taking the 40k midpoint, that comes out to 72 million people. Wow.

    Of course, the real problem is refusing to address the biggest consumers of water. In the US, 80% of water is used by agriculture. It's the elephant in the room. Worrying about the reducing the remaining 20% is an indication that there is no political willpower to address the problem.

    Also, Microsoft (and other companies) like to push PR about being "water positive" and "replenishing" water. Much of that PR is about conservation, recycling, and landscape conversion. That's all good, but the problem is that weather patterns have changed and the amount of water coming from the skies is much lower. No amount of conservation, recycling, and landscape conversion is going to help with "replenishing" water.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lije Baley ( 88936 )

      As a city slicker once said: "I don't need farmers, I get my food from the grocery store!".

    • Clearly we need to stop using all that water for agriculture and build more data centers. Then we can all just buy groceries from Amazon. Problem solved (that was easy)!

    • The water gets reused at the data center, just as it is when one takes a shower - the vast, vast majority is returned to the local water table.

    • How the hell is MS going to be "water positive"?

      What does that even mean?

    • In the US, 80% of water is used by agriculture. It's the elephant in the room.

      Indeed. We should just stop eating, and download our food from the cloud.

      • > > In the US, 80% of water is used by agriculture. It's the elephant in the room.

        > Indeed. We should just stop eating, and download our food from the cloud.

        Or we could eat that elephant in the room. It takes up too much space and shits all over the place.

  • Seems to me that a decade ago you couldn't open a tech blog without reading about super eco friendly data centres with natural cooling and all sorts of energy and resource saving innovations.

    Using evaporative cooling without any capture and reuse is mega wasteful. Like, not even trying to be eco friendly.

    I guess once the headlines were done with everybody just went back to doing what the bean counters like: using the cheapest methods no matter what the unattributed environmental cost.

    • The vast majority of data centers don't have a publicity department to woo journalists with stories about how they cool their server racks.

      If they build their water-guzzling data centers in dry, barren, remote places with cheap electricity, they aren't really "stealing" water from agriculture since, obviously, there is no local agriculture in dry, barren, remote places...

      • Yes, with local governments that are willing to provide low or no cost water licenses. The blame should be squarely on the water rights sellers and not the corporations that buy at bargain prices.

        Well, I guess we can always blame Evil Corp.

  • This is what taxes are for. Motivate them to run data centers with less water, or in places that have lots of cooling.

  • "Data center" is the tech hook,
    "exacerbate" is a fancy way to say "worsen" while subtly ,making the room temperature IQ types reading it feel sophisticated,
    and "drought" is currently fashionable.

    SEOspeak has done considerable damage to the way people communicate, and elevating trivia (data center water use) as if it were important is distraction from the main problem.

    Water used to cool data centers is not somehow ruined thereby and water of potable origin can be processed to make it potable after cooling us

  • While you are at it, stop desert building.

    I prefer dessert building.

  • Funny how looking back we can see how obviously past generations' profligate waste hurts us, especially those in 115F drought conditions before summer, but when we look at our present behavior accelerating the pattern, we pretend it's an open question.

    We can at least account for the externalities hidden from true costs and tax burning fossil fuels and fresh water from aquifers.

  • We already do this in the Columbia basin cloud zones. But, hydro is just as renewable/non-carbon as wind or solar. There's far more things that would be just fine with 100ms latency than would be bad.

    Therefore... Labrador. Goose Bay. All the green power you could ever want from Churchill Falls. If you need more than already installed, there are designs for another dozen large hydro installs in Labrador that just don't have markets currently. All the water you could want (if you even need it). Naturally

  • And there are alternatives to the water secondary cooling cycle. Put the servers in a can like someone did a few years ago and sink it in the sea, run everything through a fibre link.

    Or... use an ammonia cycle like large food processing plants. No water, just needs a source of heat to drive the cycle -- wonder if politician or executive hot air would work? Seems there is an infinite supply.

  • They don't really use water. They use a heat exchanger, so they only have to filter the warmed water and return it to the external water supply system, or maintain their own water storage for cooling.

    • If you consider extracting some of the most critical natural resources at mega scale and then putting them back in some condition where the environment has to convert them back to original usable state then it's the same for petroleum or electricity or coal or air or 99.9% of everything present on earth.

      It's all recycled finally by earth but with a certain cost and time, mostly we aren't even able to assess those costs n times but it does all go back into the earth. No matter is really being created or dest

  • Closed loop water cooling is a thing:
    https://www.csemag.com/article... [csemag.com]

    In fact it is so common, you can buy it for your own gaming rig at home. Do you think datacenter operators will want to waste water (i.e.: money) running external water through their systems? (unless of course water is free, near arctic circle, etc).

  • since using water for cooling doesn't contaminate it. Run the water supply through the cooling center and then out to other customers.

  • Probably internet should be banned completely for any non-work use, before we talk again of banning BTC mining.

  • Unoptimized apps, sub-optimal programming languages, resources waste, ... Stop the "resources (RAM, CPU, ...) are infinite as human stupidity" mantra.

    Time to create applications/services with "resource restriction" in mind.. You know like we did before this whole "everything MUST be a Web app". JSON/XML/... as serialization protocol for almost everything...

    And don't start me on resources wasted on MY computer : Electron's apps, Windows (if you can't use something else at work by company standards), ...

  • Northern Ontario or Northern Quebec mining towns. Cheap availability of secure space with an abundance of cool grey* water, also with multiple redunant feeds of fiber. It has more to do with choosing bad locations for data centers.

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