Modern technology is once again in the dock as a resource monster, going totally against the grain for net-zero obsessed climate worriers who look to choke off energy demand at every turn. Data centre issues over local water and power supplies have been widely reported e.g. here at the Talkshop, and here.
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Summary:
— While energy consumption of data centers steal the headlines, the water-intensive nature of their operations is overlooked.
— Bluefield research: water consumption by global data centers (including on-site cooling and off-site power generation) has grown 6% annually from 2017 to 2022.
— Immense water demand from data centers in areas where water resources are scarce could spark “increased competition can strain water availability, even causing data center closures.”
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Wall Street banks are in a frenzy over “The Next AI Trade,” piling into the ‘Powering up America’ investment themes, whether that’s power grid companies, commodities, such as copper, gold, silver, and uranium, and artificial intelligence chipmakers, to accommodate the explosion of generative artificial intelligence data centers anticipated nationwide through the end of the decade and beyond, says ZeroHedge (via OilPrice.com).
JPMorgan’s Asia Pacific Equity Research desk is the latest bank to jump on AI trade in a note titled “Deep Dive into Power, Cooling, Electric Grid and ESG implications.”
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Back to JPM’s note, authored by analyst William Yang and his team, which near the end explained, “While data centers have been scrutinized for heavy electricity use, the water intensive nature of their operations has been comparatively overlooked.”
Citing data from Bluefield Research, Yang said total water consumption by global data centers (including on-site cooling and off-site power generation) has grown 6% annually from 2017 to 2022. He said by 2030, water consumption could jump to 450 million gallons per day.
To put this in perspective, that’s 681 Olympic-sized pools of fresh water that will be needed each day to cool global data centers in about 4.5 years.
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Much of the water usage at data centers is “because millions of gallons of water each day are evaporated in cooling systems designed to off-load server heat,” the analysts said.
We’d love to know where the critics of crypto miners are now, as AI data centers are set to consume massive amounts of power and water.
Are any NGOs or Greta going to protest AI data centers? We doubt.
Full article here.
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Image: Asia’s largest AI data centre, Shanghai [credit: news.cgtn.com]
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