… Data centers are central to the internet’s environmental impact. While they consume a lot of electrical energy, massive amounts of water and have harmful pollutants, those levels have been relatively stable in the past decade. … Since AI servers run much hotter than a typical server, they require much more water for cooling. In 2023, Google’s data centers consumed over 23 billion liters of freshwater for cooling its servers; for context, that’s just one billion liters shy of PepsiCo.’s reported overall freshwater consumption for the same year. … AI’s environmental impact has been a topic of increasing concern for researchers like Ren and Mohammad Islam, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Texas, Arlington, who co-authored a paper on “making AI less thirsty.” “GPT-3 needs to ‘drink’ (i.e., consume) a 500ml bottle of water for roughly 10 to 50 medium-length responses, depending on when and where it is deployed,” Ren and Islam’s paper reports.

Other data center water and energy use news:

• The Wall Street Journal: To feed power-wolfing AI, lawmakers are embracing nuclear
• Ahwatukee Foothills News (Tempe, Ariz.): Phoenix Planning Commission OKs data center restrictions
• The Arizona Republic: Opinion: Data centers bring jobs and cash to Arizona. Phoenix could regulate that away
• The Nevada Independent: Opinion: Hearing offers an impressive glimpse of a brewing Nevada data center battle