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Good morning, Roca Nation. Here are today’s four need-to-know stories:
President Trump said that the US may hold discussions with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Bangladesh's ousted prime minister was sentenced to death for her role in a deadly crackdown on protesters last year (free)
President Trump urged House Republicans to support releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein
An explosion damaged a railway line in Poland that connects to the Ukrainian border, in what officials called an act of sabotage (free)
By Rob McGreevy
In yesterday’s deep-dive, we examined the data center boom and how it’s leading to higher energy bills. Today, we take the same approach and apply it to water.
Data centers – warehouses that contain computers and other hardware needed to store, process, and distribute large amounts of digital information – need water to cool off. Their computers use a lot of power, which creates heat as a byproduct. If the chips in the computers get too hot, they stop working. Simply put, water keeps ‘em cold.
The heat factor is leading data centers to pop up en masse in the Midwest: Great Lakes-adjacent data centers in Chicago, Indiana, Minnesota, and Ohio are making up what’s becoming known as Silicon Prairie, with the cool Midwest air and easy access to Great Lakes water contributing to a Rust Belt data boom.
Data centers typically operate at temperatures between 53° and 71° Fahrenheit. The most common method of cooling them is evaporative cooling, where cool air is pumped through a membrane of water into the rooms where the servers are stored. As the cool air interacts with the air that’s been heated by the servers, the water in the air evaporates, taking some of the heat with it.
Source: Effect of under-floor blockages and perforated tile openings on the performance of raised-floor data centres (2010)
It’s precisely this method of cooling that concerns people like Helena Volzer, the Senior Source Water Policy Manager for the nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes.
“When that method is used, there's a high consumptive use of water because more than half of that water is evaporated off,” Volzer told Roca, explaining that consumptive use is particularly taxing to local water supplies because it means the water will not return to its original watershed.
There are other, less water-intensive cooling methods, including ones that use chemical coolants, but these methods are less common and better suited for low-output centers.
Another potential solution is “immersive cooling,” a process that oil giant Shell calls a “server cold plunge.” Volzer told Roca that Meta is considering building data centers “with only immersive cooling.”
Some companies in China have gone so far as to dip their data centers directly into the sea: One built an underwater data center that can reduce cooling costs by 90%. But even if water weren’t needed for cooling, data centers would still impact water use.
“When that energy is being generated [for data centers] by fossil fuels or nuclear power, you still have high consumptive use of water occurring at that power plant,” Volzer explained.
For now, though, data centers do need a steady stream of liquid water for cooling. The question is: How much?
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Editor’s Note
Curious to hear what you think about this one: Are you worried about water usage? Or is this a “fake” issue, as Professor Gupta said? Let us know your thoughts by replying here.
Thanks to those of you who wrote in yesterday about AI data centers and energy costs. Here are a few of those emails.
Megan wrote:
Thanks for highlighting this issue. Can we really call it an energy crisis if we know it’s coming for years ahead of time? The people in power are already priming us normies to bear the burden of increasing energy infrastructure while laying the groundwork to profit from AI as much as possible. The reality is that the increase in energy usage should be paid for by the companies and individuals who will be making profits from it. They should be using their funds and technology to solve this problem before it becomes our problem. The fact that the tech industry has aligned itself with the GOP gives us all the information we need about who is going to represent the interests of the American people (who will be forced to pay for this) in the coming “crisis”.
Benjamin said:
Electricity costs are always going up, and I can't say for sure whether there's been an increase due to AI or not. What I CAN say is the energy strain from AI is one of the most exciting things to me about the AI boom. You heard me - exciting. For decades America has recoiled at the thought of installing nuclear power plants. Stories of Chernobyl and Fukushima are apocalyptic and nightmare-inducing, and obviously we don't want a repeat on American soil (or anywhere). The truth is though, nuclear reactors are for the large part safe yet also extreme energy powerhouses. Thanks to the AI boom, the tech giants have been spurred to find a better energy source, and they've landed on nuclear power plants as the solution. Both Meta and Google have already signed contracts to revive nuclear power plants, and the trend will likely continue. Sure, we'll likely have a short-term energy shortage now, but it's my hope that in the long-term, everyone will realize just how incredible nuclear power plants can be, and that the snowball effect will eventually solve the clean energy crisis as a whole.
Aside: there's also the argument that nuclear power plants produce nuclear waste that has to be dealt with, which is true. Thorium-based reactors are superior because they produce 100x less waste, don't melt down, and are easier to source. Sadly the US gov't elected to shut down early thorium reactors in favor of uranium reactors so the nuclear fuel could be weaponized, but that's a story for another time :)
And Maggie from NY wrote:
My electric bill doubled since September, and we're using less energy since ACs are off and our heat is gas powered. What's more frustrating is ConEd's "breakdown tool" that's supposed to show you how much energy is being used up by what household items, but always ends up looking like 20% lights, 40% appliances, and 40% "other" with no breakdown of what "other" may entail. I have no idea if I'm paying for my apartment building's hallway lights, the illegal sublet downstaris' tv, the laundromat down the street, or a data center nearby.
And find our most recent articles below if you’ve missed them:
Thanks for reading. See you tomorrow.
—Max and Max
