Amazon strategised about keeping water use secret
183 comments
·October 27, 2025nzach
fxtentacle
Most new datacenters are powered with gas turbines (because utility grid connections are slow to deploy) and that'll surely affect everyone nearby.
bittercynic
One went in 1/4 mile from my home a couple years ago. I ignored the notices of development because I thought it was far enough that it wouldn't affect me, but it blocks the view of the mountains that I used to enjoy, and sometimes I can hear noise from its cooling system (I assume).
I wish I'd known what was coming, and gone to the meetings to oppose it.
Retric
Large buildings 1000 feet from you are going to have some impact, but your complaint has little to with being a day center specifically. They could have put in a large warehouse and your view gotten blocked just the same, similarly the noise from the cooling system can be managed well or poorly on any building.
rcpt
Hopefully we will emerge from this with a legislative framework that says "fuck your view"
imgabe
> noted that it would be harder to reach its internal target if its calculations included “secondary” use—water used in generating the electricity to power its data centres, according to the document.
Ok, when we're considering how much water a person uses, are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate? Because agriculture is going to dwarf anything that data centers use.
sxp
It put this in context, it takes about 1 gallon of water per 1g of almond [1]. And in California's dry climate, this water comes from groundwater that doesn't renew as fast as it's depleted. So the next time someone chastises you for your non-low flow showerhead that uses more than 2 almonds of water per minute, remember to put the numbers in context.
1. Numbers from a pro-almond group: https://www.almonds.org/why-almonds/growing-good/water-wise
ricardbejarano
I don't know why, but the fact that a "pro-almond group" exists chuckled me up.
Ekaros
There is corruption for everything money touches...
I actually wonder if there is not single moderately sized industry that does not have some interest group...
daedrdev
Almonds alone are like half of all urban water use in california.
rcpt
Knee jerk reaction for me every time I see "almonds"
One gallon of cow milk uses more water than one gallon of almond milk.
827a
Yes: my understanding is that it’s rather common practice to at least make a best-effort estimation of all these secondary impacts.
It’s also absolutely true that “agricultural usage dominating data center usage” is a dirty little secret that a lot of people are very, very incentivized to keep secret. Amazon can’t outright say that, because uh whutabuht mah poor farmers.
ahmeneeroe-v2
Farmers?? What about my mah poor stomach? I have to eat and I assume you do too.
didibus
I find this loses the point, because agriculture is essential. If we preserve water it's because we want to keep enough of it for essentials like agriculture and such. Not that agricultural practices shouldn't better conserve water, but it's the usage of water for non-essential things that I think most people find wasteful.
CamperBob2
It's not essential that almonds be grown in California.
Faelon
Tangential to the point, I think we should be careful about the almond talking point. Insofar as it is used for milk, almond milk uses almost half as much water as dairy milk, uses 1/18 the land and emits 1/5 the amount of carbon. As food, it is eaten in such a vanishingly small quantity compared to other water-hungry foods (meat) as to be insignificant. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/environmental-footprint-m...
marcellus23
I thought the problem is that that growing almonds is usually done in arid regions, so the issue is not that it uses lots of water, but that it uses lots of water in areas that frequently experience droughts. This is an honest question (I truly don't know, although I suspect I can guess): are dairy farms also common in those areas?
lukeschlather
Just for a single point of comparison, California's alfalfa consumes 15% of the state's water. All that alfalfa is going to feed cattle. California only produces 9% of the USA's alfalfa so it's easy to say that this is a tremendous amount of water.
Almonds also consume 15% of California's water. But California produces 80% of the world's almonds. We're talking about an order of magnitude difference in water consumption, almonds are far more efficient and beef is both far more wasteful and far more common.
Faelon
Yes- about half of the total water siphoned from the Colorado river goes to cows. This number astounded me when I first read it, and I hope it has a similar effect on you. I don't like almond milk, for what it's worth, and I don't think we should ignore plant-based foods with a high climate impact, but animal agriculture is the most environmentally devastating institution we have individual power to transition from. https://www.npr.org/2024/09/09/nx-s1-5002090/colorado-river-...
HowardStark
It’s been some years but I recall that at one point probably around 2016-2017, California produced 80% of the world’s almonds. This was notable because at the same time, California was experiencing historic droughts.
wongarsu
GP's point works just as well if you substitute almonds with diary milk or hamburger meat though. The specific water use of almonds is indeed completely tangential
ilamont
Account created 10 minutes ago, hitting talking points of the almond growers industry association.
litenboll
They are replying to talking points of the dairy industry.
phs318u
Even if true, you’ve not countered a single point. Are there un-truths among those points? If so, let’s hear them.
Faelon
I've read here for a long time but just made my account because I have been feeling very compelled by the data surrounding the huge economic effects of the animal agriculture industry and how otherwise pro-science and pro-data people find themselves with deeply entrenched unscientific viewpoints. Should I link my Google scholar to prevent people from seeing conspiracies everywhere??
hgomersall
Except that almond trees thrive in hot dry climates. Cows thrive in the rain.
dylan604
But it's okay. This has been solved very recently as in last week. We are going to now be getting our beef from Argentina. Not only has the prices of beef issue been fixed, it'll also fix the country's water shortage issue as a bonus. /s
avalys
“Almond milk” is not milk. You know what else is less carbon-intensive than milk? Candy corn. But that is also _not milk_, and so equally irrelevant!
sixo
Almond milk is an economic substitute for dairy milk, making the comparison appropriate. No need to be dense about it.
ipsento606
Almond milk is not dairy milk, but it is absolutely "milk", in the sense of a white liquid derived from plants - a definition that has existed in English for hundreds of years.
The name "almond milk" has been used since at least the 1500s.
zemvpferreira
I don’t drink ‘almond beverage’ but given the amount of uses it has substituting milk (and the amount of people that accept them) it seems like a very relevant comparison. Maybe I’m not sofisticated enough but I’m yet to see a candy corn mlik latte be ordered.
ben_w
> “Almond milk” is not milk. You know what else is less carbon-intensive than milk? Candy corn. But that is also _not milk_, and so equally irrelevant!
While almond milk is an incomplete substitute for bovine mammary secretions, it is so much closer than candy corn that it has been used as a substitute for the last 800 or so years, and shared the "milk"-ness in the name before we had an English language:
The word “milk” has been used since around 1200 AD to refer to plant juices.
This makes this use of the word older than English people spelling the thing chickens lay as "eggs" rather than "eyren": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ5znvym68k
The Romans called lettuce "lactūca", derived from lac (“milk”), because of the milky fluid in its stalks: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lettuce
Similar examples abound.
For example, I grew up in the UK, where a standard Christmas seasonal food is the "mince pie", which is filled with "mincemeat". While this can be (and traditionally was) done with meat derivatives, in practice those sold in my lifetime have been almost entirely vegetarian. The etymology being when "meat" was the broad concept of food in general: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincemeat
Further examples of this: today we speak of the "flesh" and "skin" of an apple.
Personally, I don't like almond milk. But denying that something which got "milk" in its name due to it's use as a milk-like-thing, before our language evolved from cross-breeding medieval German with medieval French, to argue against someone who said "Insofar as it is used for milk", is a very small nit to be picking.
AstroBen
I mean I'm drinking a coffee with almond milk right this second.. which coincidentally replaced the dairy milk
Candy corn in my coffee wouldn't taste anywhere near as good
triceratops
> are we going to include the water used to grow the almonds you ate?
Beef too. It uses the same amount of water but people eat 30x as much annually.
rtaylorgarlock
And cheaper cow production, focused on grain-feeding, uses even more water than grass feeding; after spending a month in Switzerland, it's wild to see how addicted we Americans are to cheap beef.
vjvjvjvjghv
We need our protein or we will die immediately.
ahmeneeroe-v2
"It's wild to see how Americans are able to procure an extremely high quality protein source inexpensively"
lotsofpulp
I wonder if cow milk products would be more expensive if people ate less beef.
Presumably, after a cow is done being used for milk, it can then be sold for meat.
symbogra
As an american living in Switzerland its wild to see how scrawny most Europeans are due to lack of protein
xboxnolifes
Only 30x? Y'all eat a lot of almonds.
macinjosh
Beef is more nutrient efficient though and has better macros for human consumption. It has 4 times more protein, less fat, and no carbs. Seems to me at least Americans could do well to eat more beef and less products created from processed almonds mixed with refined vegetable oils and sugar.
Beef and milk are harvested ready to eat. Vegan substitutes are all highly processed. Processed food consumption is associated with greater cancer and diabetes risk.
triceratops
> It has 4 times more protein, less fat, and no carbs
Compared to an almond? Who the fuck eats almond steaks? It's a nonsensical comparison. If you want less fat and more protein per calorie, chicken beats beef. Chicken also has a lower water and carbon footprint.
> Vegan substitutes are all highly processed
Beans aren't "highly processed". Learn to cook and you'll understand that there are options besides processed food for vegetarians and vegans.
WolfeReader
Factory-farmed beef is the worst source of pollution in the food industry. We definitely need less of that.
gruez
Pork and chicken have better feed conversion ratios and water consumption
AstroBen
I highly recommend you read up on the actual research of what you're talking about. It points to the exact opposite of basically every sentence you wrote
Faelon
Not all processed foods are created equal. Almost all of the elevated health risk from processed foods comes from processed meats and sugary drinks. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/06/well/eat/ultraprocessed-f... Whole grain breads are ultra-processed, and I don't think many are arguing against those. Beef has absolutely devastating effects on human health including elevated cancer risk, diabetes risk, dramatically higher incidences of heart disease (the greatest killer of Americans). Plant-based substitutes are scientifically shown to lead to better outcomes. Better yet, soy based whole foods are excellent for human health, contrary to the bro-science talking points. Turns out, beans are good for you! https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/the-bottom-line-on-ultra-proce... https://www.uclahealth.org/news/article/health-benefits-soy
This book is science, front to back, cementing the idea that animal products are not ideal for human health. https://www.amazon.com/Food-Revolution-Your-Diet-World/dp/16...
raxxorraxor
At least that is generally the case for calculating the ecological footprint of a person.
I am critical of this metric though, since the water isn't really lost in many cases. Especially if datacenters use water never meant for consumption.
If you look at it as a power generation problem it become much more plastic. That is of course as long as the water doesn't get expended in regions that lack it.
Although if you want to compare datacenter usage to agriculture, you could say that one is more essential than the other. Even if modern agriculture is a high tech industry that uses datacenters.
LPisGood
I generally find criticism of water waste misplaced. Water’s lifecycle is cyclic. The water isn’t lost unless it is being salted or otherwise poisoned.
The real waste is the energy required to produce, clean, and transport the water that is being “wasted.”
pas
aquifers deplete, the water table lowers, wells dry up
sustainability, availability and maximum marginal price matters, just as with electric power generation
londons_explore
Water use is a pretty close proxy for power use which is a pretty close proxy for how much computation is happening.
I can totally see why a company wants to keep this info secret.
Competitors would really like to know.
dsco
Yes if we squint really hard then this could be the reason. It could also be because it's a PR disaster.
londons_explore
The water use actually isn't all that high - it's just easy to make "a million gallons of water every year" sound like a lot, but compared to a 500 acre farm which could easily use 3 million gallons every day, it's not very big.
The electricity use is really substantial though, but that's harder for people to visualise so gets less media attention.
jvanderbot
Right, this argument completely lacks context. Agricultural use of water is astounding. And even that is generally much less than the enormous amount of water that is available in agricultural states (CA notwithstanding).
Minnesota where I live gets approximately 3x10^13 gallons of rain / year. Yes, almost none of that is captured for use, but it's not like we're talking about a fundamentally physically limited resource here. It's just that there's a bad time/phase mismatch.
Hell, a 500 acre data center has >200 million gallons drop onto it out of the sky in MN, each year (20in avg * 500 acre = 10,000 acre-inches)
tptacek
Only because people are innumerate, though.
weird-eye-issue
Not necessarily because if you have a closed loop system then that vastly decreases the amount of water usage and increases the amount of electricity (the water has to be cooled)
SirFatty
You think that's more of a concern than public backlash with NIMBYs and local governments?
postexitus
Please send your CV over to PR
jeffbee
Water use is not necessarily linked with energy use. Open up Google's annual environmental report and look at the water consumption for each facility. Unrelated to the size/power of those sites.
semiquaver
> pretty close proxy for how much computation is happening.
lukeschlather
Looking at power use directly and making some educated guesses about average FLOPs/watt is probably the most effective way to estimate aggregate compute.
Even at Amazon I wouldn't be surprised if it's the primary way they do it, and I would be interested in some research. I'm trying to think of other ways, and accurately aggregating CPU/GPU load seems virtually impossible to do in a very rigorous way at that scale.
And yes, as an outsider you might have trouble knowing the relative distribution of ARM/x86, but that's just another number you want to obtain to improve your estimate.
jeffbee
Counterpoint: you have no factual basis for believing anything about the energy used by various CPUs in EC2, none of which are publicly available parts.
weird-eye-issue
You just proved their point though
avalys
Is this water even “used” in the same sense that water is used for bathing or agriculture?
Where does the water go? If they simply take in cold water and release hot water, that water is still available for other uses.
Or do data centers use evaporative cooling just like power plants?
xnx
> Or do data centers use evaporative cooling just like power plants?
Yes. Not always, but evaporative cooling is much more energy efficient than heat exchange to outside air.
That said, stories about data center water use are a distraction from much bigger water consumers like golf courses and agriculture (e.g. to ship alfalfa to the middle east).
harddrivereque
The problem with data center water usage is that it is unnecessary from the PR point of view. Data centers can run on air cooling just as good, but more expensive. For all I know, we could also do just as good without data centers, like we did 20 years ago.
With agriculture, water usage is necessary as eating is not something optional and everyone needs to eat to survive. From the PR point of view, of course. We couldn't live without agriculture, as we had agriculture 20 years ago too.
Golf courses are unrelated as they don't use nearly as much water as agriculture or data centers.
PR is everything, the narrative is what makes the difference. There is a lot of hypocrisy in this field, which is why I try to avoid it, but there is also some truth in it - we really didn't need that many data centers 20 years ago.
aseipp
Golf course water usage vastly dwarfs data center water usage. Google used something like 1 billion gallons a year for their DCs. Single golf courses in arid regions can use upwards of a hundred million gallons a year, and in those areas there can be dozens of courses. It's not even close in terms of water usage.
teuobk
Golf courses in the USA used about 2.1 billion gallons of water per day circa 2004 [1]. In other words, the annual usage of Amazon's datacenters per the article, 7.7 billion gallons, is less than the amount of water used on just American golf courses in four days.
[1] https://www.usga.org/content/dam/usga/pdf/Water%20Resource%2...
triceratops
> Data centers can run on air cooling just as good, but more expensive
"More expensive" means spending more on air conditioning. Ergo more electricity used, higher electricity demand, more natural gas burned and carbon emissions, higher consumer power prices. So a different kind of PR disaster.
teeray
> That said stories about data center water use are a distraction from much bigger water consumers
That's something of a fallacy of relative privation. When water is scarce, all frivolous uses should be under scrutiny. The others you mention have been well-known for a long time. The current stories simply highlight a new consumer people haven't thought of before.
Romario77
I don't think it's a fallacy, it's much easier to optimize water usage for something that much larger.
Agriculture uses about 70% of all freshwater while datacenters are less than 0.5%
Some leaky channel will cost more than all the datacenters.
wahnfrieden
Also - Will data center water usage remain "negligible" if AI succeeds at wide adoption and scales to 100x current deployment? If 100x current usage levels become a concern, I don't know why people pretend that current usage is not a concern for a tech that many of those same people are projecting to scale.
egorfine
Even in case of evaporative cooling the water is not used. It's returned to the environment.
oceanplexian
While technically true, if your datacenter is in Phoenix and you just consumed a few acre feet of water to raise the relative humidity by 0.000001%, for all intents and purposes that was a massive waste of water.
LgWoodenBadger
If the data-center depletes the water table used for surrounding wells, whether the "released water" is still "available" is irrelevant to those dependent on wells for water.
e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/technology/meta-data-cent... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy8gy7lv448o
darkwater
> Where does the water go? If they simply take in cold water and release hot water, that water is still available for other uses.
Well, first you need to cool it down in a way that's good for the environment, I presume. You should not pour down hot water in a cold river with all its fishes and plants.
mbac32768
Datacenters can use a few different kinds of liquid cooling, including the one you describe. It varies quite a bit by geography.
teeray
Even if it's evaporative cooling, couldn't the water vapor just be... condensed back into water?
johncarlosbaez
Yes - by cooling it. See the problem?
null
cm2012
This is incredibly meaningless reporting.
Water use for all of AI is inconsequential compared to agriculture.
In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around.
Energy is the important input.
moooo99
> In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around.
You can literally day the same thing about energy. Electricity is never wasted, its just different afterwards.
Water use absolutely does matter, because „being moved around“ in the quantities we do, is far from trivial. Its also different than agriculture. Agriculture still has a somewhat closed local water cycle while the water used for evaporative cooling is basically gone locally.
It matters a whole lot for where you are. If you‘d do evaporative cooling with salt water from the ocean, nobody would bat an eye. The problem is that it is done with fresh water, which is becoming increasingly scarce in an increasing number of regions around the world.
tptacek
You have to know this isn't a valid comparison. When people say the water isn't lost to cooling, they literally mean the water ends up back in the water table --- on a human time scale. When you burn fuel to generate electricity, you don't get the fuel back.
dominicq
In an increasing number of regions, yes, but not where AWS data centers are located. People are not dying of thirst because of us-east-1. The one has nothing to do with the other.
pier25
> In addition, water is almost never wasted, only moved around.
Technically yes, vapor goes to the atmosphere etc. But in certain areas, data centers are effectively removing water that was previously used for farming.
https://www.context.news/ai/thirsty-data-centres-spring-up-i...
bryanlarsen
It should be inconsequential. Sometimes it isn't. If you're pumping water from an aquifer in the desert for evaporative cooling, that's highly consequential.
Unfortunately, media sound bites can't distinguish meaningless water usage from meaningful usage.
alxmdev
Isn't agriculture objectively more important and more beneficial to humanity than Big data centers?
gruez
You might have a point if it was wheat for human consumption vs datcenter, but those aren't the water hogging plants, which are stuff like almonds, alfalfa (for export)[1]. Comparing those instead, it's unclear whether those are "more important and more beneficial to humanity" than AI, which also genuinely provides utility to people (as evidenced by its popularity).
[1] https://www.npr.org/2023/08/09/1192996975/amid-a-water-crisi...
lclarkmichalek
In absolute terms, yep. In marginal terms, not so much. See also: paradox of value
cm2012
yes and no. Most agriculture is not necessary for pure survival, especially water-needing crops in the desert. It's more luxury food products.
In addition, increasing human productivity through technological innovation is the only thing that ever let us escape the malthusian trap.
mossTechnician
> increasing human productivity through technological innovation is the only thing that ever let us escape the malthusian trap.
How so?
JuniperMesos
Honestly, it's hard to tell. Humanity benefits a lot from the massively complex set of technologies that require the existence of big data centers. Including agricultural production itself.
mcntsh
Agriculture produces food... it feels silly to compare the two.
wongarsu
Both in terms the amount of food we grow and the types of food we choose to produce we are way past the necessity of feeding ourselves and firmly in the territory of producing luxury goods that harm both ourselves and our environment. It's not as different as it seems at first glance
Incipient
The water usage for these new numbers of power consumption, in the GW range, is thousands of tonnes per day (if my maths is right haha). It's a HUGE amount of water.
LurkandComment
Useage is one issue and should be monitored, but I think you have to understand that in some cases the tech company purchases the water supply and towns become dependant or placed at will of the tech company's interest. On top of that, there is a cost increase to utilities even if the water is moving around a closed loop.
soulofmischief
I agree that the anti-datacenter hype is not much different than anti-nuclear or anti-vaccine insanity, and uses the same tactics of deception and obfuscation.
But there is definitely an impact to pulling too much water out of one place too fast, which must be ethically addressed when building datacenters.
Beyond potential impacts to other local residents in terms of reduced access to local water or price increases to meet demand, there is also the danger of disturbing the local environment and reducing the quality of local water.
We've seen the stories about increased sediment in local residents' water supply after a new datacenter moves in next door, but I'd like to share an example from my own city.
Our city is known for its soft water. It's one of the only nice things about the city. Well, we have a local Exxon plant that sits right on top of the highest point in our water table. For oil refinement, the purer the water, the better.
For decades, the vacuum created by this plant's continuous suction has created fault lines that have been leeching increasing amounts of sediment and salt water into our water table, ruining the drinking water and in some cases making it entirely undrinkable.
"In Louisiana, industry uses more groundwater than in any other state except California, according to the US Geological Survey. For decades, industrial users have been able to pump water out of Baton Rouge’s aquifer effectively without limitations – no withdrawal caps on individual wells and no metering requirement"
When you try to push against them and raise awareness, you get discredited or sued. They are dedicated to protecting their unfettered access to our clean drinking water through whatever means necessary. I do not for a moment think Amazon any different. They are an ethically bankrupt company.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/08/louisian...
JuniperMesos
> We've seen the stories about increased sediment in local residents' water supply after a new datacenter moves in next door, but I'd like to share an example from my own city.
If you're talking about the New York Times Article "Their Water Taps Ran Dry When Meta Built Next Door" described in https://andymasley.substack.com/p/the-ai-water-issue-is-fake , that NYT article was so misleading I'd call it basically a deliberate lie. The article was about a household that used well water and started having more problems with sediment in their well water when Meta started constructing a data center within a mile of them (that was not operating yet because it wasn't done being built yet). It's unclear if the construction of the data center was actually related to their sediment issues, and even if it was, the fact that it was a data center being constructed as opposed to some other type of large building was irrelevant.
soulofmischief
Yes, the materials I have seen have not convinced me, either.
That's why I thought to offer an example from my own backyard that I can verify myself, and has a much clearer story and is also in a non-datacenter industry as to avoid hype and focus on the importance of reasonable water usage restrictions.
1vuio0pswjnm7
""It would be better if they could own up to it," said a current Amazon software developer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation. "Even if they said it was a low priority, at least that would be honest.""
HN commentary on water use by so-called "tech" companies usually includes a number of mindlessly-parroted, bad faith "arguments"
One of these is to try to compare the new (additive) water use by non-essential data centers with existing (non-additive) water use by agriculture
Putting aside that (a) data centers are non-essential and not comparable to food, water or shelter and (b) agricultural use is not new, these "arguments" are also ignoring that (c) the so-called "tech" companies are trying to hide the data
Employees of these so-called "tech" companies might be experiencing guilt over this dishonest tactic, but not enough to make them quit
When their employer hides the data this makes accurate comparisons, e.g., to existing water use by other recipients, difficult if not impossible
Does agriculture also try to hide its water use
If it did, then HN comments could not attempt bad faith comparisons
Because there would be no data to cite
ajkjk
no opinion on the rest of the point, but, why do you keep writing "so-called" in front of tech companies? They are called that because they are tech companies; the word's meaning is widely agreed upon.
lpln3452
Why do companies actively lie in their advertising about being eco-friendly, instead of just keeping a low profile? Is it because we tend to focus only on current events and quickly forget their past track record? Indeed, if people soon forget the lies, the risk is minimal.
deadbabe
One reason is that large institutional investors or lenders enforce certain agendas by only giving money to companies that meet certain criteria. Thus companies will posture themselves as meeting those qualities to attract money and investment.
It’s an explanation of why so many companies suddenly appeared to go “woke”, or why they did a complete 180 when the political climate changed. Even powerful companies like Apple must grovel for favor.
null
jonhohle
Is data center water use not closed loop? If not, why?
shagie
NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Renewable_Energy_Labo... ) had a neat dashboard of their cooling system for the HPC data center. https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/hpc-data-center
https://web.archive.org/web/20200604033055im_/https://www.nr...
That PUE of 1.028 is really good ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_usage_effectiveness ). And even with all of their closed loop parts of the system, they're still needing to reject heat from the cooling towers.
https://www.nrel.gov/computational-science/reducing-water-us...
> The initial design of the data center used evaporative coolers to eliminate the added expense of energy-demanding chillers. However, while the cooling towers were more efficient and less expensive, they would consume approximately 2 million gallons of water annually to support cooling of the IT load—approaching an hourly average of 1 megawatt.
Industrial scale closed loop cooling is relatively recent technology.
> In August 2016, a prototype thermosyphon cooler—an advanced dry cooler that uses refrigerant in a passive cycle to dissipate heat—was installed at NREL. The thermosyphon was placed upstream of the HPC Data Center cooling towers at the ESIF to create a hybrid cooling system. The system coordinates the operation for optimum water and operating cost efficiency—using wet cooling when it's hot and dry cooling when it's not.
It is a goal though... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-cloud/blog/2024/12...
> Although our current fleet will still use a mix of air-cooled and water-cooled systems, new projects in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will pilot zero-water evaporated designs in 2026. Starting August 2024, all new Microsoft datacenter designs began using this next-generation cooling technology, as we work to make zero-water evaporation the primary cooling method across our owned portfolio. These new sites will begin coming online in late 2027.
More northerly data centers are likely able to achieve a lower WEU. Again from Microsoft - https://datacenters.microsoft.com/sustainability/efficiency/
namibj
They take in ambient air and release 100% humidity warmer air, basically a giant server-heated humidifier.
You could spend more electricity if needed to up the airflow to get the same cooling power without humidifying.
null
astroflection
I am assuming the 7.7 billion gallons(29b liters) a year is all surface water. It better be. It would be hideously irresponsible to use any ground water for cooling their data centers.
shagie
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/09/29/google-water-data-cen...
> The company has negotiated a pair of agreements with The Dalles city officials that would significantly reduce property taxes Google must pay on the new development and secure for the company the water it needs for its expanded operations.
> The deal to deliver groundwater to Google has drawn skepticism from members of the public who’ve grown wary of Oregon’s water stability in a changing climate, and that suspicion was on full display at a recent City Council meeting.
> ...
> “Without this agreement, [Google] or any other industry could use those wells as they wanted just as the aluminum plant previously did,” Anderson, the public works director, told the Council.
> Anderson said the amount of water that can be withdrawn from The Dalles groundwater aquifer annually without causing a decline is 5,500 acre-feet per year. Only about 1,800 acre-feet per year are being drawn out of the aquifer currently.
---
Most surface water has a "you can't drain this" compact. For example, the Great Lakes compact - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
Part of the sticking point for the Foxconn mess in Wisconsin was the water use within the watershed of the Great Lakes. https://observatory.sjmc.wisc.edu/2018/05/10/great-lakes-wat...
Microsoft's plan use: https://www.wpr.org/news/microsoft-data-centers-8-million-ga...
> The data obtained by WPR from the city shows the first phase of Microsoft’s data center campus would use a peak of 234,000 gallons per day or 2.8 million gallons per year. Under subsequent phases, the campus would use a peak of 702,000 gallons per day or 8.4 million gallons annually.
https://www.wpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/MKE-Regional-... shows the demand and discharge request.
jeffbee
or 24,000 acre-feet in the terms that we normally use to speak about water. In other words, basically none.
Reason077
What happens to water that a data center “uses”? Is it warmed up and returned to the environment? Contaminated and sent to wastewater? Evaporated into the air?
julianozen
Dumb question, but is this done with fresh water?
If so, why?
If not, does it matter how much water is used?
hwillis
Its freshwater and has to be freshwater because it goes through pipes and/or is evaporated. Corrosion, scaling and fouling are all issues.
Even if seawater was easy to use and datacenters were near the shore, it would produce very saline brine which would be difficult to safely get rid of.
I find it really odd this recent push for discussions around the development of new datacenters.
There is a plan for constructing a new high-capacity datacenter [edit: near my city]. And a lot of discussions in the media are done through an emotional tone around water and electricity usage.
The media generally frames it as if installing a new datacenter would put the neighbors in risk of not having water or electricity. I'm not arguing that a datacenter doesn't bring any problems, everything has pros and cons.
Both sides seems to be using bad faith/misleading arguments, and I thinks that's really bad because we end up with solutions and agreements that don't improve the lives of the people affected by these new developments.