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Earlier this year, e-commerce company Amazon two New Data Centers The $400 million project in Santiago, Chile, is the company’s first attempt to build data facilities in Latin America that consume huge amounts of electricity and water to run cloud computing services and online programs, and is also one of the world’s most water-scarce countries, where residents struggle to cope with water shortages. Protested the expansion of the industry.
The tech giant made another related announcement this week. Water conservation An irrigation system along the Maipo River, the main water source for the Santiago region. Amazon is partnering with a water tech startup to help farmers along the river install drip irrigation systems on 165 acres of farmland. The plan will save enough water to power about 300 homes per year and is part of Amazon’s campaign to make its cloud computing business “water positive” by 2030, meaning its web services division will conserve or replenish more water than it consumes.
The reason behind this water initiative is clear: data centers require large amounts of water to cool servers, and Amazon Plan to spend $100 billion The company plans to build more data centers over the next decade as part of a big bet on its Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. Other technology companies such as Microsoft and Meta are also investing in data centers to support the artificial intelligence boom. resemble water Pledge Amid a growing controversy over the industry’s thirst for water and power.
Amazon claims that its data centers are already the most water-efficient in the industry, and that it plans to roll out additional water-saving projects to mitigate the water shortage. But like any corporate pledge to achieve “net-zero” emissions, these water pledges are more complicated than they appear at first glance. While the company has certainly taken steps to reduce water use at its facilities, its calculations don’t take into account the massive water demands of the power plants that power those very facilities. Without a larger effort to reduce the underlying strain Amazon places on the power grid, water-saving efforts by it and other tech giants will only solve part of the problem, according to experts who spoke to Grist.
Powerful servers in large data centers run hot as they process unprecedented amounts of information, and they require both water and electricity to keep them from overheating. Rather than cooling rooms with traditional air conditioners, many companies use water as a coolant to run through the servers to cool them. The centers also require a lot of electricity to run all those servers. Servers already account for about 3% of U.S. electricity demand, a figure that’s expected to grow by 20% in the coming years. More than double by 2030In addition, the coal, gas, and nuclear power plants that produce that electricity Themselves Drink plenty of extra water to stay cool.
Will Hughes, head of water sustainability at Amazon Web Services, told Grist that the company uses water in its data centers to conserve energy-hungry air conditioning units and reduce reliance on fossil fuels.
“Using water for cooling in most locations would significantly reduce the amount of energy we use, which helps us achieve our other sustainability goals,” he said. “While you can always choose not to use water for cooling, we would like to do so heavily given the energy and efficiency benefits.”
To save on energy costs, the company’s data centers must evaporate millions of gallons of water per year. It’s hard to say exactly how much water the data center industry consumes, but the rough estimates are substantial. A 2021 study found that: Found Even before the AI boom, U.S. data centers consumed about 415,000 acre-feet of water in 2018, enough to power about 1 million homes a year and roughly the amount of water California’s Imperial Valley withdraws from the Colorado River each year to grow winter vegetables. A separate study found that data centers run by Microsoft, Google, and Meta withdraw twice as much water from rivers and aquifers as the entire country of Denmark.
AI programs like ChatGPT require huge amounts of server space, so it’s almost certain that this figure has ballooned in recent years as companies build more centers to accommodate the artificial intelligence boom. Tech companies have built hundreds of new data centers in the past few years alone, with hundreds more planned. Recent estimates suggest ChatGPT has Average sized water bottle For every 10-50 chat responses, these companies’ on-site data center water consumption currently Major beverage company PepsiCo, etc.
Amazon doesn’t release statistics about its water consumption; Hughes told Grist the company is “focused on efficiency.” But the tech giant’s water usage is likely lower than some of its competitors. One reason is that it builds most of its data centers with so-called evaporative cooling systems, which require much less water than other cooling technologies and kick in only when temperatures get too hot. The company estimates its water usage at about 10% of the industry average, and in warmer regions like Sweden, it doesn’t use water to cool its data centers except during the hottest summer months.
Companies could reduce their environmental impact by locating their AI operations in temperate regions where water resources are plentiful, but they must balance efficiency concerns with land and electricity costs and the need to be located close to key customers. Water consumption at US data centers In places like the Southwest, it’s “disproportionately concentrated in water-stressed basins.” Amazon has centralized much of its business. Further east, especially in Virginia, Cheap electricity Financial incentives for technology companies.
“Many stores are run by customer needs, [prices for] “We want to conserve real estate and electricity,” Hughes said. “Most of our data center sites are in areas that aren’t too hot and aren’t in water-scarce areas. Virginia and Ohio get hot in the summer, but we don’t need to use water for cooling most of the year.” Still, the company’s expansion in Virginia is already raising concerns. On-water availability.
The company also funds dozens of conservation and recharge projects, such as in Chile, to reduce its impact on these watersheds. The company also donates water it captures from its data centers to farmers, who use it to irrigate their crops. Restoring the River Providing water to cities suffering from water shortages Cape Town, South AfricaIn Northern Virginia, Establishing cover crop fields This reduces runoff pollution in local waterways. The company treats these projects the same way other companies treat carbon offsets, counting every gallon charged against the gallons consumed at its data centers. Amazon Latest Sustainability Report The company said it is 41% toward its goal of being “water positive” — in other words, it has funded projects that replenish or conserve just over four gallons of water for every 10 gallons it uses.
But the company’s water management goals don’t even include the water consumed by the power plants that supply its data centers, which can be three to 10 times the amount of water consumed on-site at the data centers, according to Xiaolei Ren, an engineering professor at the University of California, Riverside, who studies data center water use. Amazon Data Centers In Pennsylvania The nuclear power plant is within one mile.The data center uses about 20 percent of the power plant’s capacity.
“They say they use very little water, but there’s a lot of water evaporating nearby that powers the data center,” he said.
Companies like Amazon can reduce this secondary water use by relying on renewable energy sources that don’t require as much water as traditional power plants. Hughes said the company tries to “manage” both its water and energy needs and operate with separate goals. 100% renewable energyHowever, Ren points out that the company’s data centers require a 24-hour power supply, and that intermittently available renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power have their limitations.
Amazon is not alone in tackling this issue. Another major data center company, CyrusOne, Revealed in the sustainability report The company announced earlier this year that it had increased the amount of water it uses to power its data center sites by more than eightfold.
“To the extent that we rely on the electric grid, including thermal sources, to power our facilities, we are indirectly responsible for the significant consumption of water in the production of that electricity,” the report states.
Even replenishment projects like the one in Chile are only partially helpful in mitigating the impact of the data center explosion. Amazon’s cloud business has projects in many of the same basins where it has data centers, and even though it is “water positive” globally, that doesn’t mean access to water in any particular basin will remain intact. The company’s data centers and power plants may be pumping more water than the company replenishes in a given area, and replenishment projects in other aquifers around the world cannot address the physical impacts of that particular overpumping.
“If they can capture some of the water resources, purify it and return it to the community, that’s better than nothing, but I don’t think it’s going to reduce actual consumption,” Wren said. “It masks a lot of the real issues because water is really a local issue.”
Fix: This story has been corrected to clarify that Amazon’s “Water Positive” pledge applies only to its Web Services division.
This article was originally published on GristGrist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories about climate solutions and a just future. For more information, From Grist.org.
