AfaIk, unlike power plants which use e.g. the water of rivers for cooling, data centers use either drinking water or ground water for their cooling needs and thus, contribute to a decrease of ground water level if it’s not used in sustainable amounts.
It doesn’t come out clean. There’s a lot of additives added as part of the cooling system. While it can be cleaned up, like it’s theoretically possible to build an effectively closed loop, they’re not actually doing that. Also it’s often potable water from residential supplies that comes from reservoirs and it’s not going back in those reservoirs.
It’s more about killing whatever aquifer if they get too much. But near-zero waste ones exist. There just isn’t legislation pushing for it. Which is what we should be arguing for. Sustainable data centers.
It is the heating up of waterways that can devestate ecosystems but it is way more problematic of course if ground water is wasted on that. Anyhow, if they don’t do that, the main issue with AI data centers is insane pollution by illegal emergency gas turbine power planrs and noise.
I don’t get the hypehate around water-„consumption“ of data Centers. The water goes in and in some way back out. It doesn’t vanish.
AfaIk, unlike power plants which use e.g. the water of rivers for cooling, data centers use either drinking water or ground water for their cooling needs and thus, contribute to a decrease of ground water level if it’s not used in sustainable amounts.
It doesn’t come out clean. There’s a lot of additives added as part of the cooling system. While it can be cleaned up, like it’s theoretically possible to build an effectively closed loop, they’re not actually doing that. Also it’s often potable water from residential supplies that comes from reservoirs and it’s not going back in those reservoirs.
It’s more about killing whatever aquifer if they get too much. But near-zero waste ones exist. There just isn’t legislation pushing for it. Which is what we should be arguing for. Sustainable data centers.
It is the heating up of waterways that can devestate ecosystems but it is way more problematic of course if ground water is wasted on that. Anyhow, if they don’t do that, the main issue with AI data centers is insane pollution by illegal emergency gas turbine power planrs and noise.
that’s just the first law of thermodynamics
or maybe the law of conservation of mass
but you can’t ignore the second law of thermodynamics
there’s no less hydrogen and oxygen in the universe but the usability of it changes