- 517 of the 809 planned data centers in the US are currently in locations affected by a drought over the past year
- U.S. regulators are taking note of the direct cooling needs of data centers, but may be overlooking the costs of power generation and manufacturing.
- The issue is quickly becoming political for many Americans, 70% of whom do not want to live next to a data center.
The United States may be suffering from an unprecedented drought, but AI data center builders and their advocates seem unfazed for now.
This despite local frustrations over the detrimental impact of AI data centers on living conditions becoming increasingly evident.
This unprecedented situation is affecting both power generation and water supply, but is meeting a somewhat muted response from political actors in several regions.
AI water needs far exceed closed loop
The AI industry maintains that closed circuits are very efficient in both cooling and water use, and data center operators like AWS are implementing their own custom circuits to take advantage of the situation, but that could be just the tip of the iceberg.
The elephant in the room for most data centers is power: all current buildings will require reliable power to support the computing they are expected to host in the near future.
This is particularly challenging at a time when the U.S. grid is already expected to be under strain, even as it passes higher energy costs on to consumers in the coming years.
In a report published by
At a time when U.S. data center construction continues wherever possible, even as some insurers express concerns, a drought seems like a fairly secondary concern for companies on the warpath toward Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
This has led some US regions to take a proactive approach, with Seattle effectively banning new data center projects for an entire year as the city grapples with higher electricity costs and a relative lack of tangible benefits for residents.
Water and energy are shaping up to be the biggest AI challenges in the coming decade, even as companies continue to voraciously demand more computing, but others are less enthusiastic about the issue overall, noting that there are other concerns at play with rural and conservative populations, a key voting demographic for the current US administration, bearing the brunt of rising water and energy costs even as access becomes a bigger concern.
Andrew Coppin, CEO of Ranchbot, a tool that allows ranchers to monitor their water use, summed up the situation speaking to the guardian:
“Farmers’ concerns are real and justified. Data centers are the trend of the month right now, but we wouldn’t choose to be able to shower only on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays. I mean, ChatGPT is a pretty good tool, but most people would rather eat a steak if they had to choose.”
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