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#waterscarcity

3 posts3 participants3 posts today

"Bloomberg News found that about two-thirds of new data centers built or in development since 2022 are in places already gripped by high levels of water stress. While these facilities are popping up all over the country, five states alone account for 72% of the new centers in high-stress areas.

Tech giants are racing to expand with new — and larger — data centers to support AI, consuming more resources, including water. That only adds to concerns that communities facing water shortages will have to compete with data center operators to access clean water.

The problem has been years in the making. Some tech companies are trying to find ways to address it, without creating other environmental drawbacks. Meanwhile, the proportion of data centers in water-stressed regions is at a record high.

Even before ChatGPT launched in late 2022, communities complained about data centers guzzling up millions of gallons of water every day from cities that didn’t have all that much to spare. The problem has only deepened in the years since ChatGPT kicked off an AI frenzy."

bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai

"Datacentres, vast warehouses containing networked servers used for the remote storage and processing of data, as well as by information technology companies to train AI models such as ChatGPT, use water for cooling. SourceMaterial’s analysis identified 38 active datacentres owned by the big three tech firms in parts of the world already facing water scarcity, as well as 24 more under development.

Datacentres’ locations are often industry secrets. But by using local news reports and industry sources Baxtel and Data Center Map, SourceMaterial compiled a map of 632 datacentres – either active or under development – owned by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

It shows that those companies’ plans involve a 78% increase in the number of datacentres they own worldwide as cloud computing and AI cause a surge in the world’s demand for storage, with construction planned in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia."

theguardian.com/environment/20

The Guardian · Revealed: Big tech’s new datacentres will take water from the world’s driest areasBy Luke Barratt