AI has a water problem. Google thinks it has a fix

In the face of widespread backlash to the AI data center buildout throughout the US, Google is touting its efforts to minimize the environmental impact by actually increasing water for local communities.

The company laid out five commitments around water use in a new blog post published Wednesday, including a goal to replenish more water than it uses at its data centers by 2030. Google also said it will invest in local water infrastructure, identify alternative water sources to power its facilities, and be transparent about its water use overall.

“We’re just one of dozens of players in the space,” Google’s global head of infrastructure and sustainability Ben Townsend told The Verge in an interview. “We think it’s really important to sort of put a blueprint out there that communities can reference, so if somebody else comes and says, ‘we’d like to build a data center there,’ a community can say, ‘well, here are five different things that really put the community and the watershed first. Are you doing these? Are you doing one of them? All of them? None of them? And if not, why?’”

The commitments come amid growing opposition to the rapid data center buildout helping to power the extensive energy needs of AI. Google parent company Alphabet recently said it wants to raise $80 billion from stock sales to fund its buildout for the technology. A recent Gallup poll found that more than 70 percent of Americans oppose the idea of a data center being built in their area. Half of the respondents cited data centers’ impact on environmental resources as a motivator behind their opposition, including 18 percent who cited excess water use as an issue.

AI data centers require vast amounts of water for cooling, with a recent study finding that the technology used as much water annually as people drink from water bottles worldwide. Google’s prior estimates of its own water use for AI have been misleading, according to some researchers, who say they omit indirect water usage. The widespread resource concerns have driven a wave of commitments across the industry to limit water usage and prevent data centers from driving up consumer energy prices.

But Google’s Townsend defended the company’s record thus far. “To the best of our ability, we are accounting for the offsite water footprint,” Townsend said, “and I think we’ve made significant progress in reducing or eliminating the water footprint of that supply chain through our waterless renewable energy investments.”

In the blog post, Google’s vice president of global infrastructure Bikash Koley says water usage at data centers can lower overall energy use. “In many places, water cooling can reduce data center energy use by approximately 10% compared to air cooling,” Koley writes. “The aggregate water consumption of data centers is small — U.S. data centers use less than 1% of the water that Americans use on their lawns annually — but we are focused on protecting local water resources in all aspects of our data center operations.”

Koley says Google will be able to replenish more water than it consumes in the next four years by investing in projects that improve things like irrigation and infrastructure. It promises to keep reporting its annual water use and look for alternative sources like reclaimed wastewater, as it’s done in one Georgia county. The company also announced $17 million to support new water stewardship projects across seven states.

Those who worry about data centers sucking up all their water have valid concerns, Townsend said, though he says they might use less water than people think. “It would be a real disservice to the space to say there’s only misconceptions out there. That’s not true,” Townsend said. But, he added, the data center sector doesn’t use as much water as people might think, and now is the time to invest to make sure “that data center water use doesn’t become a problem.”