Opinion: Big Tech needs to tackle its water addiction
Skeptics (including me) assembled when Facebook, Google and Microsoft made respective pledges to replenish more water than they use within the next fifteen years. The main reason: private companies are beholden to shareholders, boards, bottom lines, and customers–not pledges. …For context, Google accessed 2.3 billion gallons of water for use in three America-based data centers (out of 21 data centers in operation total) in 2019 alone. Facebook withdrew roughly 3.7 million cubic meters of water in 2020, with the majority of that water applied to cooling data centers and being lost to evaporation.
-Written by David Lynch, CEO of Klir, headquartered in Reno, Nevada.