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Water consumption is increasing due to the AI boom. Water is used to cool computing equipment in data centers. According to FT, water consumption in Virginia, home to the largest concentration of data centres in the world, increased by almost two thirds between 2019-2023, from 1,13 billion gallons up to 1.85 billion.
Many believe that the trend is unsustainable. Microsoft, a data center operator with a large footprint, claims that 42% of its water consumption in 2023 will come from “areas of water stress.” Google has said this year, that 15% of their freshwater withdrawals will come from areas of “high water scarcity.”
Why can’t data centres recycle water in a closed loop system? Many do, however, a large portion of the water they use is used to control humidity, which means it evaporates. In drier areas, air that is not humidified can be a good conductor of static electric charge, which is bad for computers.
