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A retail data center uses 6 million gallons of water a year, about the same as a golf course. A hyperscale data center, the type that runs AWS or GCP uses 200+ million gallons a year. An “AI” data center uses an order of magnitude more. Those numbers are all on the low range. The higher estimates are 1.8 BILLION gallons annually.
Those are just direct water usage. Water is also used to cool the power plants supplying the power to these data centers. Even if they use new forms of cooling, like closed loop systems, those systems trade the water usage on site for energy usage. That increased energy usage uses more water at the power plants.
This water isn’t reused, like on golf courses, it’s not collected and recycled. It’s pulled from aquifers and rivers and evaporated straight into the sky. It’s not only destroying the downstream environments, but it’s destroying underground aquifers that humans survive on.
There is literally no way to look at AI data centers and claim they are good for the environment. And if you come in and claim that agriculture uses more, you’re just an idiotic troll. Food keeps us alive, LLMs do not.
This water isn’t reused, like on golf courses, it’s not collected and recycled. It’s pulled from aquifers and rivers and evaporated straight into the sky.
How do golf courses reuse water any more than data centers do? They’re environmental disasters on a comparable scale, though obviously they aren’t accelerating at the pace that LLMs are.
You ever notice how many ponds are on a golf course? Any excess water from sprinkling drains to those ponds, instead of off of the course. That is then reused.
There are also reservoirs under tee pads used to keep evaporation down.
And finally, very nice courses use underground systems like SubAir that pull excess water away, oxygenating the soil to promote growth with less water and saving the excess water for later.
Golf courses try very hard to prevent water loss from evaporation. It’s why you see so many damn sprinklers on a golf course. The more sprinklers reduce the distance the water has to travel, reducing evaporation, and also results in more even coverage meaning less water loss to runoff. Golf courses aren’t tech companies. They don’t just throw money away trying to capture entire countries markets, they have to function in society in a very visible way as being seen as wasting a lot of water.
Data centers don’t have to do any of that, and big tech companies get free passes to do whatever the fuck they want no matter how bad they’re fucking the environment.
A retail data center uses 6 million gallons of water a year, about the same as a golf course. A hyperscale data center, the type that runs AWS or GCP uses 200+ million gallons a year. An “AI” data center uses an order of magnitude more. Those numbers are all on the low range. The higher estimates are 1.8 BILLION gallons annually.
Those are just direct water usage. Water is also used to cool the power plants supplying the power to these data centers. Even if they use new forms of cooling, like closed loop systems, those systems trade the water usage on site for energy usage. That increased energy usage uses more water at the power plants.
This water isn’t reused, like on golf courses, it’s not collected and recycled. It’s pulled from aquifers and rivers and evaporated straight into the sky. It’s not only destroying the downstream environments, but it’s destroying underground aquifers that humans survive on.
There is literally no way to look at AI data centers and claim they are good for the environment. And if you come in and claim that agriculture uses more, you’re just an idiotic troll. Food keeps us alive, LLMs do not.
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption
How do golf courses reuse water any more than data centers do? They’re environmental disasters on a comparable scale, though obviously they aren’t accelerating at the pace that LLMs are.
You ever notice how many ponds are on a golf course? Any excess water from sprinkling drains to those ponds, instead of off of the course. That is then reused.
There are also reservoirs under tee pads used to keep evaporation down.
And finally, very nice courses use underground systems like SubAir that pull excess water away, oxygenating the soil to promote growth with less water and saving the excess water for later.
Golf courses try very hard to prevent water loss from evaporation. It’s why you see so many damn sprinklers on a golf course. The more sprinklers reduce the distance the water has to travel, reducing evaporation, and also results in more even coverage meaning less water loss to runoff. Golf courses aren’t tech companies. They don’t just throw money away trying to capture entire countries markets, they have to function in society in a very visible way as being seen as wasting a lot of water.
Data centers don’t have to do any of that, and big tech companies get free passes to do whatever the fuck they want no matter how bad they’re fucking the environment.