by George P. Nassos
Although climate change, or climate crisis, is the big environmental issue in the media, two other very important environmental issues are the decline in quality and quantity of freshwater and the overconsumption of our natural resources. And these three environmental problems are impacted by the growing global population which has quadrupled in less than the past 100 years. In 1927, the global population reached two billion people and now we are well over eight billion.
While most of the earth is covered by water, it is primarily salt water. Of all the water on the earth, only 2.5% is fresh water. And of this small amount of fresh water, only about 1.2% is available for consumption with the balance being in glaciers, icecaps, and groundwater. How is all this available water consumed? Worldwide, agriculture accounts for 70% of all water consumption, followed by industry (just under 20%) and domestic uses (about 12%). However, the domestic use exceeds the availability as roughly half of the world’s population is experiencing water scarcity for at least some portion of the year. The growing population requiring food for survival is having a major impact on the agricultural sector as well as the industry and domestic use sectors.
Another increase in freshwater demand is coming from the increase in datacenters which require large amounts of water to cool the electrical equipment. The three big technology companies, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, operate 38 datacenters in parts of the world already facing water scarcity, and they have another 24 under development. These three technology giants are planning hundreds of datacenters in the US and across the globe, with a potentially huge impact on populations already living with water scarcity. These three companies will eventually have 632 datacenters in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. These companies plan to expand their activities in some of the world’s most arid regions because datacenters must be built inland, where low humidity reduces the risk of metal corrosion, while seawater also causes corrosion if used for cooling.
In addition to the increase in these datacenters, there is also an increase in demand for AI. Cloud computing and AI are causing a surge in the world’s demand for storage, and additionally there will be an increase in electricity demand to operate the datacenters. This will create an additional increase in water consumption.
One of the areas of great interest for the additional datacenters and AI facilities in the U.S. is Maricopa County, particularly in the city of Mesa, Arizona. This is quite surprising since Arizona is already suffering from water shortages. In June 2023, Arizona state officials revoked construction permits for some new homes there due to drought and a lack of groundwater. Drought has not halted Google’s plans for a second Mesa datacenter, while its first center has a permit to use 5.5m cubic meters of water a year – about the same quantity used by 23,000 ordinary Arizonans.
Most datacenters right now are going from air cooling to water cooling because liquid is more efficient when you try to cool down high-density racks, which are the ones that are mostly being used for AI. So, this is another reason for the increase in water demand.
Similar increases in water demand are occurring in other parts of the world. In northern Spain, Amazon is planning three new datacenters that will require more electricity than the region currently consumes and thus more water. With 75% of the country already at risk of desertification, the combination of the climate crisis and datacenter expansion is bringing Spain to the verge of a possible ecological collapse.
These are just two examples of what the increase in AI and datacenters is causing to the already shortage of fresh water. With climate change we are already attacking that environmental issue by generating electricity with zero emissions. Is it possible to modify these new technologies with zero water consumption? That may be the new technological innovation in demand.