Google Says It Will Replenish More Water Than It Uses At Data Centers (9to5google.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: There's been a lot of pushback in recent months around the impact of AI data centers on local communities, with the use of water being a key issue for many. Google, in an expansion of its "water stewardship" programs, is making commitments that include replenishing more water than it uses at its data center sites. AI data centers go through a lot of water use in cooling the hardware used to power models, and Google is no exception. While Google stands by saying that the impact of AI data centers on U.S. water consumption is "small," it also says it is focusing on "protecting local water resources in all aspects of our data center operations."
In a post, Google explains five new commitments regarding water use at its data centers in the U.S. These include replenishing more water than is consumed at data centers, helping local utilities to modernize water infrastructure, using air-cooled solutions in areas where watersheds are at risk, "transparently" reporting water use at data centers, and focusing on "alternative and reclaimed" water solutions. [...] In a linked paper (PDF), Google says it will replenish 120% of the water it uses at data center sites by 2030. Google is also committing $17 million to new water stewardship projects in Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas in addition to 165 other projects already in place throughout the U.S.
In a post, Google explains five new commitments regarding water use at its data centers in the U.S. These include replenishing more water than is consumed at data centers, helping local utilities to modernize water infrastructure, using air-cooled solutions in areas where watersheds are at risk, "transparently" reporting water use at data centers, and focusing on "alternative and reclaimed" water solutions. [...] In a linked paper (PDF), Google says it will replenish 120% of the water it uses at data center sites by 2030. Google is also committing $17 million to new water stewardship projects in Georgia, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, and Texas in addition to 165 other projects already in place throughout the U.S.
No they won't (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No they won't (Score:5, Informative)
The Colorado River Indian Tribes project is a replenishment initiative that conserves water for Lake Mead through reduced withdrawals
Nope, that's not replenishment - that's just using less somewhere else. It's like the carbon credits farce. You can't replenish more than you used, which makes 120% just some number they pulled out of their ass for marketing. At least be honest and say 'google will try to use less than currently.'
-Do no evil my ass
Re: No they won't (Score:3, Informative)
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By not being closed. Evaporative cooling towers come to mind.
Disclaimer: I get that taking water out of a feed that is intended for potable water use and evaporating it off is a huge loss of an often precious resource.
That said, if the water is simply being evaporated for cooling, then it's still part of the natural water cycle - holistically, no significant loss, right? This isn't a counter point to anything you said; Just an observation in the context of those saying you can't just make water so where are they getting the extra 20%, or the closed loop systems that
Re: No they won't (Score:3)
Money! (Score:2)
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> That said, if the water is simply being evaporated for cooling, then it's still part of the natural water cycle - holistically, no significant loss, right?
On a global scale maybe, but on a local scale this can be devastating. Just because the water will rain back down somewhere eventually does not help the people who need the water here and now. Water that evaporates is functionally gone forever.
> then dumping the water down the drain to flow out to wherever it'd be significantly worse
That depends e
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Reroute a river? Cloud seeding? Just lying about it and making it look correct on paper like Carbon Credits? You can't just create water.
Well I mean, you can. You are doing it right now (assuming you didn't die between your post and now)
This is such utter horse shit. As a hardware-oriented IT worker, what I want to know, is how the fuck you lose water in a closed loop cooling system? Are they just evaporating it?
Evaporative cooling towers. They provide the cooling for the closed loops. Pretty common in big commercial installations because they are way cheaper than refrigeration driven chillers. They can be used to pre-chill before going to a chiller, or replace a chiller entirely depending on needs.
How the heck do you keep that water clean enough?
Filters and chemicals.
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This is such utter horse shit. As a hardware-oriented IT worker, what I want to know, is how the fuck you lose water in a closed loop cooling system? Are they just evaporating it?
Evaporative cooling towers. They provide the cooling for the closed loops.
If the evaporated water isn't collected again, such as how CPU heat pipe coolers work, then it's not a closed loop[^1]!
[^1] ... or the loop that is closed included the greater environment, and we really need to work on our communication skills cause that's not what the general understanding would be.
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Piss, they are going to have every employee drink water at home and deliver frosty piss at work.
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Piss, they are going to have every employee drink water at home and deliver frosty piss at work.
Will it be in disk form?
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They just assume that nobody knows basic science, and everybody is going to just accept it as Gospel because The Big Company says so.
And, of course, because they wanna be as cheap as possible, they're using copper heat pipes and blocks for heat transfer, and water to carry the heat to some sort of heat exchanger (because they haven't heard of immersion cooling... more expensive to set up, but quite effective).
They don't lose water, but they have to add fun chemicals to the water used so the copper piping an
Re:No they won't (Score:5, Informative)
I can't find the citation for it, but in at least one case, part of the reported allocation of water for datacenters was due to the water consumed during construction. I would consider this kind of consumption legit if called out as a temporary usage of water, but FUD if just assumed as part of the overall calculation of ongoing water demand.
As for creating/destroying water:
https://www.fwpcoa.org/content... [fwpcoa.org]
"Air cooling (water-free): Many smaller or older data centers rely on air conditioning and chilled air circulation to remove heat. These use mechanical chillers or heat exchangers and do not consume water for cooling (aside from minimal water for humidification). Air cooling is common in cooler climates or where water is scarce, but it can require more electricity to run compressors or fans.
Evaporative cooling (open-loop): A majority of large, modern data centers use water-based cooling for better energy efficiency. This often involves cooling towers or evaporative chillers: warm water absorbs heat from servers and is then cooled by evaporation in a tower. As water evaporates into the air, it carries away heat â" dramatically cutting the electrical power needed for cooling. The trade-off is high water consumption. Most big data centers today use some form of evaporative cooling because itâ(TM)s energy-efficient, especially in hot climates, but it directly uses water (often drawn from municipal supply).
Closed-loop water cooling: In closed-loop systems, water circulates in sealed pipes or coils that cool the servers without directly exposing water to air. Because the water isnâ(TM)t evaporated to the environment, losses are minimal â" itâ(TM)s mostly the same water recirculating (with some makeup water added occasionally). These systems can include water-cooled heat exchangers or liquid-to-liquid cooling loops. Closed-loop cooling can reduce freshwater use by up to 70% compared to traditional open evaporative methods. The downside is higher cost and complexity, but they are far more water-efficient since water isnâ(TM)t âoeburned offâ into the air."
"However, a growing number of data centers are now shifting to recycled water. Tech giants have begun partnering with utilities to use treated wastewater (effluent) for cooling instead of fresh drinking water. For instance, Google uses reclaimed or non-potable water at over 25% of its data center campuses (one notable example is its Douglas County, Georgia data center, which runs on recycled municipal wastewater). Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced in 2023 that 20 of its data centers are cooling with purified wastewater instead of potable water. After cycling through the cooling system, this water is sent back to the treatment plant to be cleaned and reused again. These initiatives leave more drinking-quality water for the community and exemplify the industryâ(TM)s trend toward âoestrategic water sourcing.â Still, as of today, reclaimed water use is the exception. Most data centers worldwide are still using fresh water for cooling, although this is slowly changing with new projects and local regulations."
So evaporative cooling "destroys" water. And using treated wastewater (pure enough to use for datacenter usage and probably irrigation, but still too ick for some people to drink directly - aka toilet to tap), if part of their investments were to purify even more water than the municipality was already processing, combined with closed loop usage could be considered "creating" water.
Your guess is as good as mine though, it all sounds like marketing hype in an attempt to combat FUD.
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"recycled treated wastewater"? I can only imagine they would have the mother of all filtration systems so that a tiny chunk of "whatever" doesn't clog up a tiny water line.
And, the chemicals they have to add to prevent corrosion and water scale and all that pollutes the water used enough that it might not be reclaimable without specialized filtration.
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"recycled treated wastewater"? I can only imagine they would have the mother of all filtration systems so that a tiny chunk of "whatever" doesn't clog up a tiny water line. And, the chemicals they have to add to prevent corrosion and water scale and all that pollutes the water used enough that it might not be reclaimable without specialized filtration.
I think such systems are generally dual-loop. There's the loop that directly cools all of the equipment, which is full of pure (might even be distilled) water that circulates but is not consumed, then that water goes through a heat exchanger in a much larger supply of treated wastewater. So the wastewater doesn't get close to sensitive equipment and doesn't run through tiny pipes.
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Well, I guess it's time for a massive 'congratulatory' cheer! They plan to manage to do something that is reserved only for the Gods of old (in other words, scientifically impossible)... over-unity water usage? Sounds awesome!
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There's always giant ice asteroids they can crash into the planet.
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Well, I mean, you can. You do it by burning hydrogen. If they were really clever they could power the data center by burning hydrogen, and use the generated water for (at least a portion of) the cooling. I'm sure it wouldn't be energy efficient nor economically efficient, but it could technically be done. (Forget that the water generated would be in the form of vapor, not liquid. Details.)
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Return to office + collecting employee urine.
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The closed loop is inside the datacenter - it's a loop of glycol of some kind that carries heat efficiently and has a high boiling point. That closed loop is cooled by water streams that are open to the atmosphere. Some of that cooling water circulating through cooling towers and over the working loop pipes evaporates. On a dry day a fuckload of it evaporates, making the cooling system super effective. At wasting water. If the water part of the system was not open to the atmosphere, making use of the atmosp
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Condensation is really the only mechanism. I want to see this in action before I believe their claims
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They pump aquifers and deplete them faster than they recharge, causing everyone with a well in the area to go dry.
It's not about "destroying water" it's about building your data center in an area that has limited resources and exploiting them for your own personal gain.
Google can't put water back in the aquifer. They pump it dry, and leave everyone who lives there to deal with the problem.
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and no caffeine.
iykyk
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By the time the water in the Mississippi River reaches the mouth to the Gulf it has passed through nine human bodies.
What does "replenish" mean in this context? (Score:3)
TFA doesn't say what they mean by "replenish". Are they going to wave a magic wand and fabricate new water?
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If they manage that Miracle, I wanna know how (great way to start a flood with a flick of the wrist!).
Where does it go? (Score:1)
Data centers use water for cooling.
Ok, I get that.
But don't you get the water back?
My car uses water for cooling too, and the radiator recirculates it. I'm not pouring in gallons of water to drive across town.
Even if the water comes out of the data center "hot", why can't it be cooled again?
What am I not understanding here?
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Most data centers use evaporative coolers.
Re:Where does it go? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Where does it go? (Score:4, Insightful)
I would encourage people to go research the amount of water consumed by data centers (including the power generation to run them) vs golf courses and almond farms
And beaches, don't forget beaches, they use huge amounts of water!
The issue is that these wealthy companies want to exploit local water sources, often in lower-income communities that already struggle to produce enough clean, inexpensive water for the people who already live there. There are no new golf courses being built (acres of courses in the U.S. is relatively stable), and acres of almond trees have gone down considerably in the last few years. So try proposing a new golf course or almond farm in the same community that is opposed to water-hogging data warehouses, and I think you'll find the same response -> don't exploit us for our water!
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You're not understanding the word "evaporation." If you've ever seen industrial scale cooling, you'll recognize the hyperboloid cooling towers and the giant plume of vapor coming out of the top as the hot wet air meets the cooler dry air. A datacenter has a cooling loop full of a working fluid, probably glycol, which comes out of the datacenter in pipes that are sprayed with local water (basically). That water draws heat away from the pipes and working fluid, and some of it evaporates (the plume). When it e
Re: (Score:2)
I think the PP understands well enough. Why can't data centers use a closed water loop to move heat and then a water to air radiator like a car does. Sure, it would be huge. But evaporative cooling has been designed around a water supply being free or really cheap. It isn't.
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My guy. I don't know where you live, so I'm going to treat this as a good faith question from someone who lives near an abundant natural water resource.
Much of the country pumps water from a well connected to an aquifer. If you start to pump the aquifer faster than the baseline level of recharge, the level of water begins to drop. If you continue to pump the water out of the aquifer, it doesn't matter what happens to the water after you're done using it. You clean it, discharge it into the local creeks,
Google Says It Will Replenish More Water Than It (Score:2)
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So let's all piss in Google's data center intake.
Re:Yes They are taking the piss. (Score:2)
"Taking the piss" is a coarse way of saying "personalized water conservation". Your ideas are intriguing to me, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter
Employee catheterization and stoma output harvesting are communal ways Google can proactively involve staff and even local communities in resource reharvesting, plumbing being a solved problem.
How-To (Score:3)
So the only way to do this is to make water. So which method will Google be using to make water? Will they use:
- Desalinization? Doubt it.
- Distillation from air? Doubt it.
- Combine hydrogen and oxygen gases? Yea, nope.
So how will they make 120% of the water they consume? The article talks about misnamed conservation efforts. That's not making water.
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They managed to gain the power of the old Gods and can create stuff from nothing... didn't you get the memo?
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So the only way to do this is to make water. So which method will Google be using to make water? Will they use:
- Desalinization? Doubt it. - Distillation from air? Doubt it. - Combine hydrogen and oxygen gases? Yea, nope.
So how will they make 120% of the water they consume? The article talks about misnamed conservation efforts. That's not making water.
One common way is treating municipal wastewater. This doesn't "create" water, but it does make available a water supply that wasn't previously.
My air conditioner produces water all day long (Score:2)
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Yes, you can, but that's not making water (making water implies waving a wand and making water _not_ from the humidity.
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They're going to need the cooling energy to condense that plume back into liquid. Now if they used solar power to do that, well they might get 75% of the water back at most. Or they could be just water farming the air with huge evaporators.
You should stop reading at the point.... (Score:2)
making water? (Score:2)
Is Google making water? No, they would have to transport that water. I guess you could claim to help local water while ignoring an empty Lake Mead. The water comes from somewhere.
There are better ways to cool data centers (Score:2)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada... [www.cbc.ca]
Toronto company using lake water to cool buildings expands system
Enwave Energy Corporation says move will save 350 Olympic-size swimming pools' worth of water
A Toronto-based energy company says it is expanding its system that uses cold water from the depths of Lake Ontario to cool several buildings downtown.
Enwave Energy Corporation announced the newest expansion of its deep lake water cooling system at a news conference on Thursday. The system has been in place for 20 years
Do not (Score:2)
I repeat, DO NOT trust anything being said by these companies, especially Google.
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Name just ONE promise Google hat backed down on.
They never just abandon projects or commitments.
You can trust these guys long-term for sure. /s
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Bwahahahahahaha
BULLSHIT (Score:2)
"Google Says It Will Replenish More Water Than It Uses At Data Centers"
Yeah, sure they will. And artificial sweeteners were safe, WMDs were in Iraq, and Anna Nicole married for love.
And what if Google doesn't, what is anyone going to do about it? Sue Google? Good fuckin' luck with that.
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" Anna Nicole married for love."
oh she absolutely did; you could say it was biblical love
1Timothy 6:10
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oh she absolutely did; you could say it was biblical love
Mamma always said, "It's just as easy to fall in love with a rich man..."
No they won't unless forced (Score:2)
if they gave a damn they'd already be doing it
In what way do data centers make water dirty? (Score:1)
Tahoe is losing a major power source (Score:2)
“Tahoe’s Liberty Utilities informed the California Public Utilities Commission on March 6 that its longtime energy provider, NV Energy in Nevada, had a “change of stance” and could no longer provide power to Tahoe. NV Energy supplies about 75% of Liberty’s current power and gave Liberty until May 2027 to make that up with a new power source.”
“Data centers are going up all over the st
I don't want or need Google to do that (Score:2)
One of the major reasons you can't afford beef, or at least a good beef, is because we have been in a drought for decades now and it has finally caught up with us on cattle prices. There just isn't enough water especially in Texas to keep all those cattle going so they can be turned into hamburgers.
Water is not an infinite resource. If we ha
Put a price on water (Score:2)
Google says... (Score:1)
Google says it won't be evil. Will renege later when it becomes too expensive to carry out their initial stated intentions....
An old story (Score:2)
I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.