Data centers power the cloud computing services companies rely on for everyday tasks, including banking, logistics and data storage and processing. In many countries, including Australia and the United States, data center infrastructure is now considered critical infrastructure. However, our burgeoning digital dependency demands significant water usage, and often in regions that are already water-poor.
Data centers rank among the top-ten water-consuming commercial industries and the United Nations has predicted that by 2025, 50% of the world's population will live in water-stressed areas, making the relationship between data centers and their environment a global priority. While much of the water consumption is indirect — production and supply of electricity from power generation plants — approximately one quarter is attributed directly to water used for cooling. A small one-megawatt data center that uses traditional cooling methods, such as direct evaporative cooling, can consume more than 25 million liters of water per year—enough to supply more than 200 UK homes—and a significant percentage of these data centers are in areas with highly stressed watersheds where the demand for water exceeds the natural supply, according to global sustainability company Arup.
In light of the above, accelerated data center development is likely to generate both scrutiny and opportunity. However, the AI era should create the solutions for improvements in the way in water is used and managed, thereby mitigating the possible impact of data center development on the world's scarce water resources.
To navigate the issue, we must first understand how data centers use water. First, data centers need electricity to power their servers. Producing this electricity requires the indirect use of water, whether to operate a power plant or a hydropower station. Second, the continuous, regular running of servers generates significant heat. When factoring in irregular events, such as "thermal runaway events", where an increase in temperature causes a further increase in temperature creating a loop whereby heat generation outpaces heat dissipation, the potential heat generated can become highly disruptive. Data centers use considerable amounts of water to cool their servers to functioning thresholds. Without adequate cooling, the servers can overheat, fail or even catch fire.
The volume of water usage (both direct and indirect) is highly dependent on the data center's location. Mechanical cooling is required to cool data centers in hot climates, but free air cooling can be used for cold climate locations. Data centers that use high rates of mechanical cooling are often located in regions with existing water scarcity issues (e.g., in parts of Asia-Pacific and Africa where data centers are usually located near large population centers). As a result, the environmental impacts of data center development, particularly in already water stressed regions, is being increasingly scrutinized by local communities, governments and water activists.
As data center development is both promoted and examined, opportunities are emerging for data center operators and developers to use and reuse water in innovative ways. Most technology companies have adopted ambitious water-positive targets for the operation of their data centers and are increasingly exploring and applying technologies to reduce and minimize water usage.
Data center operators are investing in cooling technology innovation and seeking to implement technologies that have been used in other heat-intensive industries, such as air-cooled heat exchangers in renewable energy and cooling towers in chemical processing. Floating data centers have also been introduced to save both energy and water; the IT equipment is cooled using the natural temperature of the water that the data center floats on, thereby reducing water consumption. Research is also being conducted on products that allow for direct liquid cooling of chips and equipment that dissipates heat generated by electronic systems more directly, by methods including spray cooling with refrigerant to submersion in insulating fluid known as dielectric fluid.
Data centers operate within a specific local context. Developers, operators and technology companies are developing ways in which data centers and local communities can share and benefit from domestic water resources, through water and aquifer restoration, recharging and replenishment programs, and social outreach and engagement initiatives.
Prioritizing data collection and analysis will be essential to accurately track and measure data center water usage and management, and improvements are already evident. As of 2021, most data center operators did not measure their water impact (primarily focusing on power consumption metrics). However, industry working groups are now developing measurement standards and guidance, and most technology companies are collecting data to measure their progress against publicized water-positive targets. Governments are also setting targets for sustainability in relation to data centers. The European Commissions has adopted a new EU-wide reporting scheme which is intended to increase transparency and potentially to promote new designs and efficiency developments in data centres that can not only reduce energy and water consumption, but also promote the use of renewable energy, increased grid efficiency, or the reuse of waste heat in nearby facilities and heat networks.
A combination of the accelerated global data center development program and increased environmental activism has prioritized water use and reuse initiatives for data center developers, operators and tech companies. Given the unrelenting digital acceleration, and the sobering reality of water scarcity, working towards a reduction in water usage is the next frontier in this critical sector. Unsurprisingly, it is likely to be the AI capability that data centers store and process, which will be able to generate the innovative solutions required to solve the problem of water sustainability and replenishment.
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