Data center water consumption is getting out of control
Data center water consumption has increased dramatically over the past six years, and the recent explosion of artificial intelligence has seriously threatened the ambitious sustainability goals of many major technology companies.
Records obtained by the Financially Just found that water use in IT infrastructure facilities in Virginia’s Data Center Alley has increased by nearly two-thirds since 2019.
The co-locations around Ashburn, VA, which handle an estimated 70% of the world’s internet traffic daily, consumed more than seven billion liters of water in 2023.
This represents an increase of nearly 64% compared to the approximately five billion liters consumed in 2019, according to data from authorities in several northern Virginia counties.
The widespread introduction of AI tools is placing new demands on cloud infrastructure and promoting the rapid expansion of data centers by hyperscalers in various regions of the world.
The energy costs associated with this expansion have been widely publicized, and Microsoft, Google and Amazon have made concerted efforts to demonstrate that they are expanding their capacity to meet this demand in a responsible manner by investing heavily in sustainable data centers.
The main focus was on concluding power purchase agreements with local companies to generate green electricity. For example, Microsoft signed the largest corporate renewable energy deal in history in July when the company partnered with Brookfield to provide power to operate data centers in the US and Europe.
Amazon and Google have taken similar steps, buying up renewable energy to power their data centers and minimize their carbon emissions. Water use, on the other hand, has received less attention, even though it is just as integral to the process.
In conversation with IT professional, Ghinwa Chammas, Head of Sustainability at the British Standards Institution (BSI), pointed out that unlike green energy, water is a finite resource that must be managed responsibly.
“Any large-scale use of freshwater must take into account that the challenge of global water security is as urgent a crisis as that of climate change. As outlined in the BSI and Waterwise Thirst for Change study, freshwater is a limited resource that countries must manage carefully,” he said.
“There are many factors related to the growing population and the increasing demand for water. While this applies to all sectors, the technology industry has always been a water-intensive sector.”
Data center water consumption hits areas with “high water scarcity”
In 2022, a Google-owned data center in The Dalles, Oregon, came under sharp criticism after local authorities revealed that the facility was using a third of the city’s water supply for cooling purposes.
During a lengthy legal battle between Google and the city of The Dalles, documents were released showing that the hyperscaler’s water use has tripled since 2017. This is especially concerning considering the region receives minimal rainfall and is in the midst of a multi-year drought cycle.
Overall, Google announced that 15% of its total freshwater use in 2023 came from areas of “high water stress.” However, Microsoft announced that 42% of its freshwater withdrawals in 2023 came from “areas of water stress.”
ITPro asked Microsoft for comment on this number and was referred to a recent blog post on water efficiency in data centers by Noelle Walsh, Corporate VP of Cloud Operations & Innovation at Microsoft.
The blog said the company is well positioned to meet its goal of becoming water positive by 2030 and announced two focus areas for its efforts to reduce water intensity, including increased efforts to conserve water at every stage of operations and innovative technologies that reduce water requirements for cooling.
Amazon has not released comparable figures, but promised that AWS will be water positive in 2022 and will return more water to freshwater sources than it withdraws by 2030.
An AWS spokesperson said ITPro that in 2023 almost half of this target was achieved and the organization was also able to improve its water use efficiency (WUE) during the same period.
“We strive to conserve and reuse water across all of our local operations and in the communities in which we operate, working with nonprofit and public sector partners to support water availability,” the spokesperson said.
“AWS is 41% of the way to achieving its 2023 Water Positive goal. AWS also increased its WUE to 0.18 in 2023. As a result of our investments in water replenishment projects, we returned 3.5 billion liters of water to communities in 2023.”
Chammas added that the sector will continue to draw more water from freshwater reserves as hyperscalers continue to scale their cloud infrastructure to meet new AI demand.
“As the infrastructure required to support AI grows, the sector is likely to become much more water intensive. Therefore, the entire sector needs to adopt a circular economy mentality wherever possible. There is no silver bullet, but there are many steps that can be taken,” she added.
“Water recycling and reuse should become the norm wherever possible so that companies avoid excessive water abstraction. Where new data infrastructures are built, systems should be built in to support water reuse.”
“Fundamentally, technology companies must strive to go beyond just using water efficiently. They must deliver a net gain for the environment through initiatives to renew or conserve water resources.”
