On September 5, 2023, in West Des Moines, Iowa, a Microsoft data center is visible next to Interstate 35.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that artificial intelligence has a water usage issue as this technology develops and more data centers are built to support it.
The software giant’s water consumption increased significantly between 2021 and 2022, according to Microsoft’s most recent sustainability report. 4,772,890 cubic meters of water were consumed by the business in 2021. That number increased to 6,399,415 in 2022, an increase of about 30% from one year to the next. It would take more than 2,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools roughly 1.7 billion gallons of water to fill that amount of water in a single year.
Why did Microsoft draw so much water? AI supercomputer data centers are in demand. As a result of equipment heating up, computers may shut down if a data center overheats. The company’s investment in and development of AI are directly related to the rise in water use. OpenAI, which operates a data center in Des Moines, Iowa, has received backing from Microsoft. The center must use a lot of water in the summer to keep the equipment cool, especially because climate change is causing Iowa’s temperatures to rise.
The Des Moines and Raccoon rivers, among other local watersheds, provide the water used to cool the supercomputer that creates AI systems, according to the Associated Press. However, surrounding towns can also access drinking water from local waterways. West Des Moines Water Works, a nearby utility firm, has started to worry about the amount the data centers are using.
According to a document from the utility dated April 2022, officials and the utility will only take into account new data center projects outside of Microsoft Data Centre Project Ginger East and West if the new projects can considerably reduce their water usage. According to the publication, this strategy for resource preservation will assist safeguard West Des Moines’ water supply for present and foreseeable commercial and residential needs.
Water use has increased at Google, another big behemoth with significant investments in AI technologies. The company’s water usage climbed by roughly 20% between 2021 and 2022, according to an environmental study published this July. In an email to Gizmodo in July, a spokeswoman said, they are working to tackle the impact of the amount of water they use through the climate-conscious data center cooling approach and water stewardship strategy.
It might be more difficult for major IT businesses to cool facilities as the planet warms. Even though many data centers are located in colder regions like the upper Midwest state of Iowa and the Pacific Northwest, both have experienced heat waves.
Other tech firms have had trouble keeping their data centers operational in particularly hot weather. During a heat wave in September of last year, equipment at Twitter’s data center in Sacramento malfunctioned. Data centers overseas have also experienced an increase in heat waves as a result of the climate problem. The data centers for Google and Oracle in London went offline in July of last year as England sweltered in temperatures of over 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit).
