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AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

wsj.com

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Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#21

Post by bayindirh »

Avicebron wrote: post #5
pj_mukh wrote: post #3

tl;dr: Because the power plants they rent power from, and have very little control over, use water too Is that water cleaned and put back in the environment? Can the municipalities use the tax cash influx to clean up their power sources? Not answered or considered which is weird for an org as storied as WSJ. The bottom line is Heartland re-industrialization will use resources and look different from previous industri…

> Can we keep the political focus on the oligcharcal control over our government instead of making something as dry as data centers some kind of new frontline on the Omni-cause I imagine every side jumping on the water issue is exactly trying to distract from this. You'll notice you hear about water consumption issues much more than oligarchy and wealth inequality on "progressive media".

> I imagine every side jumping on the water issue is exactly trying to distract from this.

With the planet heating up at an enormous pace and we have a new hip word called "Water Scarcity" with a cool map (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_scarcity#/media/File:Wat...),

I don't think this is a distraction.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#22

Post by Avicebron »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #19
Avicebron wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can we keep the political focus on the oligcharcal control over our government instead of making something as dry as data centers some kind of new frontline on the Omni-cause I imagine every side jumping on the water issue is exactly trying to distract from this. You'll notice you hear about water consumption issues much more than oligarchy and wealth inequality on "progressive media".

It's a real issue, and it feels like a bad faith claim that people are "jumping" on the issue as a distraction. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can call out wealth inequality and oligarchy, and also talk about the very real water issue with regard to data centers (and electricity, and loss of rural land, and other many other aspects).

I wasn't trying to make the claim in bad faith. I think as a casual observer, it's fairly obvious when a certain part of a conversation comes to dominate the bigger and more problematic part.

I'm all for responsible water use in data centers and I don't doubt that the cheapest, most environmentally destructive option is the one being used. That should be talked about, pushed back against, etc.

However, let's not argue in bad faith and say that we can walk and chew gum at the same time, and then quietly forget about the walking (oligarchy/wealth inequality/decreasing quality of life/increasing cost of life, etc) while everyone yells and throws water stats around.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#23

Post by bayindirh »

natas wrote: post #16

I feel like we've already had this discussion with respect to Crypto; crypto used more energy than banks (which proved to be false, but whatever); and water. Now AI uses magnitude more energy than crypto (or humans) and somehow they're now saying it's okay?

That's a great fallacies of our times:

    - I don't like crypto, so it's bad,
    - I like AI, so it's good, even if it's destroying our world.
We're all grown up children at the end of the day. We like our toys and are in denial of its harms. Scale doesn't matter.

BTW, I believe that AI is a good thing in its ideal case, but we need to sort its energy use and data ethics issues.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#24

Post by quickthrowman »

bayindirh wrote: post #10
oersted wrote: post #8

I feel like it’s never made clear in what way the water is used up in these cases. It’s not like it’s consumed like fuel. And it is not absorbed like in agriculture. But I understand it is not trivially recyclable either, the heat of the water alone can be harmful if released as-is. Does cooling happen via evaporation and is that how the water is “lost”? And I am not sure if it is contaminated in other ways. What is…

When you're using water in a open-loop data center, you get in cool/cold water, add biocides and other chemicals to protect your infrastructure, then heat it and pump it back to the body of water (i.e. river, lake or an underground hole, or somewhere). The result is unusable, somewhat toxic (since you can't remove the chemicals), deoxygenated (hot water can dissolve less oxygen) liquid which can't be used for anythin…

> When you're using water in a open-loop data center, you get in cool/cold water, add biocides and other chemicals to protect your infrastructure, then heat it and pump it back to the body of water (i.e. river, lake or an underground hole, or somewhere).

These are not power plants, there are zero data centers using open loop cooling that discharge loop water back into a waterway. It’s unnecessary when you’re cooling a data center.

The system is filled with water and begins operating. As water is lost to evaporation in the cooling towers, more water is added to the cooling loop.

At no point is any of the cooling loop water discharged back into a waterway, it gets recirculated through the system.

All that being said, closed loop cooling is much better in areas with a lack of water.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#25

Post by bayindirh »

quickthrowman wrote: post #24
bayindirh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you're using water in a open-loop data center, you get in cool/cold water, add biocides and other chemicals to protect your infrastructure, then heat it and pump it back to the body of water (i.e. river, lake or an underground hole, or somewhere). The result is unusable, somewhat toxic (since you can't remove the chemicals), deoxygenated (hot water can dissolve less oxygen) liquid which can't be used for anythin…

> When you're using water in a open-loop data center, you get in cool/cold water, add biocides and other chemicals to protect your infrastructure, then heat it and pump it back to the body of water (i.e. river, lake or an underground hole, or somewhere). These are not power plants, there are zero data centers using open loop cooling that discharge loop water back into a waterway. It’s unnecessary when you’re cooling…

I'm not sure, because of two reasons.

First, I don't see the banks of dry coolers or chillers required to cool that amount of water in many of the data center photos.

Second, our closed loop data center is not losing that amount of water, so losing 10 billion gallons of water to evaporation across that many data centers seems unrealistic, even with evaporation for humidity balancing and dry-cooler boosting reasons.

Sitting on top of a data center and directly working on it has its perks, apparently.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#26

Post by loudmax »

bix6 wrote: post #9
bradleyjg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point was that google generates hundreds of billions of dollars from the same water that $34 million in alfalfa. It’s absurd to complain about their usage. Water use policy is about agriculture, agriculture, and also agricultural. Everything else is a distraction.

How is everything else a distraction? We are overusing our water budget so every little piece on top is extra impactful.

Agriculture uses orders of magnitudes more water than data centers. A 50% cut in water use by data centers will have nowhere near the impact of a 5% cut in water use by agriculture. But data centers can generate orders of magnitude more revenue.

Say rain water is leaking into your house from two holes in the roof: one is 1 meter in diameter, the other is 1cm. Any effort you spend plugging the 1cm hole is a distraction from the 1m hole you really need to focus on.

You could make an argument that agriculture is different because we need agricultural products to live. But we don't need those specific products to live (alfalfa, almonds, etc), and they could be grown far more efficiently if water were priced by market rates.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#27

Post by bryanlarsen »

jaredcwhite wrote: post #17
gordonhart wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find golf courses to be a more effective framing. Even if the alfalfa is consumed by animals, it's still a part of the food supply chain and gives people the easy response, "yeah, but we need to eat, we don't need datacenters." Google's 10.9B gallons in 2025 is equivalent to ~55 18-hole golf courses (200M gallons/year average in the US). Which provided more value to the economy and to you as an individual last year…

The golf courses in my town provide infinitely more value to me than anything from Google. And I don't even golf.

You might not use any Google products. But pretty much all of your goods and services providers do. Google is providing significant value to you second hand.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#28

Post by pizlonator »

How much water AI data centers use feels like the least interesting reason to dislike them.

If I wanted to dislike them for environmental reasons, then I’d focus entirely on the energy consumption and CO2 emission from the generators directly hooked up to the data centers since the grid can’t provide them with enough juice.

If I wanted to dislike them for economic reasons, I’d focus entirely on the weird circular deals and mountain of debt.

If I wanted to dislike them for social reasons, I’d focus on how AI proponents themselves admit that the whole point is to take all of our jobs.

The water thing feels like a weird hill to die on. It doesn’t feel serious. It’s by far not the biggest problem!

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#29

Post by bayindirh »

pizlonator wrote: post #28

How much water AI data centers use feels like the least interesting reason to dislike them. If I wanted to dislike them for environmental reasons, then I’d focus entirely on the energy consumption and CO2 emission from the generators directly hooked up to the data centers since the grid can’t provide them with enough juice. If I wanted to dislike them for economic reasons, I’d focus entirely on the weird circular dea…

> It’s by far not the biggest problem!

Yeah, you're right. Some parts of the world is running out of fresh/clean water. We can drink coke instead.

Re: AI Data Centers Use More Water Than Most Tech Giants Report

#30

Post by lostmsu »

loudmax wrote: post #26
bix6 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is everything else a distraction? We are overusing our water budget so every little piece on top is extra impactful.

Agriculture uses orders of magnitudes more water than data centers. A 50% cut in water use by data centers will have nowhere near the impact of a 5% cut in water use by agriculture. But data centers can generate orders of magnitude more revenue. Say rain water is leaking into your house from two holes in the roof: one is 1 meter in diameter, the other is 1cm. Any effort you spend plugging the 1cm hole is a distractio…

> data centers can generate orders of magnitude more revenue

You can't eat data.

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