Google datacenters use 'a quarter of all water' in one US city
- Reference: 1671478212
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/12/19/google_datacenters_dalles/
- Source link:
The figures show that the search giant consumed 274.5 million gallons (about 1.2 billion liters) of water during 2021 at its facilities in The Dalles alone. This is dwarfed by the 845.8 million gallons (3.8 billion liters) consumed by Google datacenter infrastructure at Council Bluffs in Iowa.
Overall, Google's consumption of water across the US during 2021 accounted for 3.3 billion gallons (12.4 billion liters), with “additional global locations” (ie, the rest of the world) representing an extra 971 million gallons (4.4 billion liters).
[1]
This may sound like a lot (and it is), but to put it in perspective, Google claims that the total annual water consumption of its datacenter operations is comparable to the water footprint of 29 golf courses in the southwest US.
Oregon city courting Google data centers fights to keep their water usage secret [2]READ MORE
These figures also refer to potable water, and do not include other sources such as seawater, Google said.
The case was touted as a major test of Oregon public records law by media outlet The Oregonian, which requested the information from Google last year, as [3]The Register reported . It has been involved for the past 13 months in a legal case with the city of The Dalles, which argued on behalf of the search giant that the details should be considered a trade secret.
[4]
[5]
However, city officials decided to [6]drop the case and provide past water use data for Google and agreed to provide annual water usage in future years.
According to The Oregonian, water use by the search giant at the facilities in The Dalles has [7]nearly tripled in the past five years, and it claims that Google’s datacenters now consume more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.
[8]
This situation is unlikely to improve in the near future, since the company has already submitted plans for a further two datacenters to be located at The Dalles.
However, this does highlight the increasing concern around the world over the environmental impact of the massive bit barns operated by companies like Google.
A recent report from the [9]Uptime Institute pointed out that datacenter operators are aware of this and aiming to up their efforts in anticipation of reporting on sustainability metrics becoming mandatory in some jurisdictions over the next five years. Currently, only about half report their water usage or datacenter carbon dioxide emissions, it said.
[10]AWS joins the water positive gang, claims it will be there by 2030
[11]Amazon's carbon footprint spread 18% in 2021
[12]Meta thirsts for desert conditions in datacenter water quest
[13]UK's largest water company investigates datacenters' use as drought hits
[14]Microsoft Azure cloud region settles over desert in Doha, Qatar
In the UK, Thames Water, which serves parts of London and the Thames Valley, [15]announced earlier this year that it has begun efforts to try and quantify how much water is being used by datacenters within its area of coverage, and said it wanted to work with operators to reduce their overall water usage.
Google is also a signatory to the Climate Neutral Datacenter Pact (CNDCP), an initiative involving datacenter operators and trade bodies as part of the European Green Deal. [16]In July , the signatories presented the European Commission with proposals for minimizing the volume of water used in their datacenters. However, they also have until 2040 to achieve compliance with the new metrics it proposes. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2Y6DtDbwy84iiv-NYjrXy6wAAAAI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/05/oregon_google_water/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/05/oregon_google_water/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y6DtDbwy84iiv-NYjrXy6wAAAAI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33Y6DtDbwy84iiv-NYjrXy6wAAAAI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.rcfp.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/City-of-The-Dalles-v.-Advance-Local-Media-Settlement-and-dismissal.pdf
[7] https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44Y6DtDbwy84iiv-NYjrXy6wAAAAI&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/09/environmental_sustainability_colocation/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2022/11/28/aws_water_positive_2030/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/03/amazon_carbon_report/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/31/meta_to_save_water_/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/24/thames_water_datacenter_water/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/16/azure_cloud_region_qatar/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/24/thames_water_datacenter_water/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/28/climate_neutral_datacenter_pact/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Bit of a suprise, but I expect it's due to all the river water
The reason the DC's are there is due to the massive and cheap hydro power from the Columbia river, and they are trying to squeeze every penny out of it.
What is a little surprising is that there isn't more water re-use happening in the system, and I wonder if some of that is "out of scope" for the report. The output from the Google site may be going straight into wastewater reclamation not back in the river, and may be offsetting other municipal or private water use as a result.
Or not, but unlike a fab, which needs large amounts of high purity water as input which then gets loaded with all kinds of chemical contaminants that aren't always easy to remove in a closed loop system, the DC should be generating more waste as heat then as chemicals. So even if it is open loop now, much of that load should be possible to shift to closed-loop operation. The DC is literally next to the river, so I am a little surprised to hear they are pulling that much water from the potable water supply, but the EPA may have had words about them diverting river water directly.
Them might have also determined the cost and environmental impact of doing water processing at the municipal plant was less than building a smaller version of the same thing on the DC lot. Be interested to see a follow up article on this.
potable water
Drinking tap water in the USA is a commie plot to undermine the sales of Coca-cola and Budweiser.*
*Other brands of shit beer and fizzy pop are also on sale in the Land of the Free (tm).
Can't they just cool it and use it again? They're hardly *drinking* 1.2 billion liters a year
Cost
They can, but won't because of cost.
Put it this way - we all understand that you either need to take the heat out or bring something colder in.
Mains water is colder, and fairly cheap*,
So you bring in the water and transfer the heat to it,
And then... then you just dump the "used" water out because it's cheaper to bring in new cold water than it is to re-cool the existing water.
*cheap in terms of cost, not in terms of depriving local residents of water
It is a lot of water ...
Why? Aircon usually produces water, doesn't it? Are they simply hosing the racks?
NB: I'm not an A/C expert. Or any kind of expert, really.
Re: It is a lot of water ...
Watercooling is cheaper than aircon, I think?
And probably has a lower carbon footprint?
"This may sound like a lot (and it is), but to put it in perspective, Google claims that the total annual water consumption of its datacenter operations is comparable to the water footprint of 29 golf courses in the southwest US."
I hate golf as well.
Have these people never heard of a closed loop system?
WTF is a liter?
What is this liter thing?
It seems to be a unit of measurement unknown to commentards. If so, why isn't it calibrated to normal Register metrics like the Wales, giraffe or London Bus.
consuming water in a datacenter
doesn't mean that it goes up in smoke after a single use.
Google (probably wastefully) pulls the h2o from a reservoir or aquifer, runs it through equipment chillers, and then dumps it back into the 'environment' for the next user to claim temporary use of those very same molecules over and over again.
I suspect that there isn't a single reader here, including the more emotional/obtuse ones, that don't know this.
The wisdom of Google placing itself in the water usage supply chain like this is certainly a source for lively debate as is the question of how efficiently Google is using water and energy resources in order to track little Johnny's mobile device and web browser statistics and if that usage is of overall benefit to society.
Closed cooling?
Are they seriously just like running it through the colling system once then like spraying it into the air or what? My cars have all used water cooling, and other than the sh**ty Dodge Shadow I had that ridiculously blew the head gasket, I have not had to keep adding water to any of them. (The Shadow started visibly spraying coolant out the side of the block and also was pissing it away into the cylinders just as fast, which is why I say it blew it ridiculously.) Are they seriously just running water through the cooling system once then dumping it? Highly inefficient, especially if they're using potable water (presumably water treated by the local water treatment plant) for it.
Re: Closed cooling?
It was always cheaper for large power stations to use cooling ponds or direct outlets if the water was available.
Large cooling towers were always expensive, but because of "Legionnaires disease", it's rather more expensive and complicated to run cooling towers than it used to be.
(Also, the 'steam' coming out of those large cooling towers was a marketing disaster. People always thought it was 'smoke')
Uses more water than my house!
"The Dales" is 16,000 people on a steep bit of the river. It's not London.
The company in the mirror.
Maybe they also need to changes their way rather than getting others to do it. https://www.theregister.com/2022/12/19/green_tech_to_the_rescue/