What does it mean to be consumed in this context? After used for cooling isn’t it clean enough for drink and other uses? Can’t it go back into other systems? Can’t it be used for agriculture?
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US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
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Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#12What does it mean to be consumed in this context? After used for cooling isn’t it clean enough for drink and other uses? Can’t it go back into other systems? Can’t it be used for agriculture?
"consumed" means it was used for evaporated cooling and let off into the atmosphere. It's obviously a resource that replenishes, but wells replenish at a limited rate [and can run dry] so it's not a negligible issue.
Feel free to google this yourself, or ironically ask an AI, it'll happily confirm it's a real issue.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#13Irrespective of how this number is calculated, whether is blue/green water etc here is some comparison data for context, since I personally think that hearing big numbers without any point of reference is pointless.
Annual withdrawals (2015)
- Thermoelectric power: ~48.5 trillion gal
- Irrigation: ~43.1 trillion gal
- Public supply: ~14.2 trillion gal
- Self-supplied industrial: ~5.4 trillion gal
- Aquaculture: ~2.76 trillion gal
- Mining: ~1.46 trillion gal
- Livestock: ~730 billion gal
- Total: ~117.5 trillion gal (322 Bgal/day)
Source: Estimated use of water in the United States in 2015: U.S. Geological Survey Circular - https://doi.org/10.3133/cir1441
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#14Context: 1 acre-foot, a usual unit of measure for agricultural water, is a bit under 1/3 of a million gallons. 17B gallons is about 52k acre-feet. Vs. just the state of Arizona's historic water allocation, from just the Colorado River system, is over 2M acre-feet. Which, if you're familiar, has created a whole industry of growing extremely water-hungry but rather low-value crops in the desert . The latest Federal pla…
Golf courses use about 1.63 million acre feet, about 32X more, some of that probably reenters watersheds and aquifers, not necessarily great with fertilizer runoff. But they pose lower risk of human extinction, so have that going for them.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#15Context: 1 acre-foot, a usual unit of measure for agricultural water, is a bit under 1/3 of a million gallons. 17B gallons is about 52k acre-feet. Vs. just the state of Arizona's historic water allocation, from just the Colorado River system, is over 2M acre-feet. Which, if you're familiar, has created a whole industry of growing extremely water-hungry but rather low-value crops in the desert . The latest Federal pla…
I want to understand if we're really comparing apples to apples. What does 'consumption' mean in these contexts? How much of the water returns to the local water table vs evaporation vs becomes waste water?
Well in agriculture the water "consumed" is returned with a whole bunch of chemical runoff.
In datacenters the water "consumed" is returned with a whole bunch of...water.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#16One gallon of almond milk requires 1,600+ gallons of water (likely much more — given some estimates are each almond requires up to 3 gallons of water). US almonds are almost entirely grown in California and consume 1.5T to 2T gallons of the state’s water.
It’s pretty dumb to compare AI/data center usage to water usage when something that’s actually wasteful such as almond milk exists.
There’s better metrics to make one’s anti-AI point.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#17This is a manufactured propaganda issue by dishonest and/or innumerate people. However, can’t data centers just use closed-loop cooling and avoid this whole thing? With all the money going into AI, it’s hard to imagine it being prohibitively costly.
They use closed loop systems. That reduces the water consumption on-site, but you still need to move the energy out of the DC, which requires a lot of energy. That extra energy itself is likely produced by upstream power plants evaporating water. In practice you mostly move the consumption upstream.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#18What happens with the water in the DC after it has been consumed?
Well it is primarily evaporated into the air. It rains down somewhere, often over the ocean.
Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#19What does it mean to be consumed in this context? After used for cooling isn’t it clean enough for drink and other uses? Can’t it go back into other systems? Can’t it be used for agriculture?
This refers to water that is evaporated for cooling of both the datacenters themselves and the power plants that give them electricity. The remaining water after evaporation is so full of minerals that it has to be discharged as sewage. This evaporation process is used to cool the closed loop of fluid that actually moves heat in and out of the data halls.
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Re: US data centers tripled annual water consumption to 17B gallons
#20Context: 1 acre-foot, a usual unit of measure for agricultural water, is a bit under 1/3 of a million gallons. 17B gallons is about 52k acre-feet. Vs. just the state of Arizona's historic water allocation, from just the Colorado River system, is over 2M acre-feet. Which, if you're familiar, has created a whole industry of growing extremely water-hungry but rather low-value crops in the desert . The latest Federal pla…
Most of those partisans have no idea what other sources of water consumption are by magnitude. They seem to quote any number as if it is a lot. A billion gallons is a lot. 500000 gallons is not a lot.
Each datacenter uses as much water as 1,000 homes. You're welcome to put such resource constraints in your own local community if you don't care about the increased demand.