What Google will do to contain water consumption in data centers
Last year, Google's data centers consumed more than 16 billion liters of water cooling their servers. But the company wants to become more sustainable, including on electricity. All the details
In 2021, Google's data centers around the world consumed approximately 16.2 billion liters of water for cooling.
WHAT ARE DATA CENTERS
A data center (or data center ) is an establishment that hosts a large number of servers and serves to guarantee the functioning of all those services that are normally used when connecting to the Internet, such as searching for information, consulting one's e-mails, exchange messages or calculate the shortest route to a destination. Many industries depend on cloud computing , those services that allow you to manage your data over the Internet, instead of keeping it on company computers.
Together with submarine cables , data centers are therefore one of the most important "physical" infrastructures of the Internet. In addition to electricity, these establishments also consume large quantities of water, which is needed to cool the servers that heat up as they process data.
HOW MUCH WATER DO GOOGLE DATA CENTERS USE?
Google owns data centers in twenty-three locations around the world. Their annual water usage, according to a company estimate, is equal to that of 29 golf courses in the US Southwest.
Many of Google's data centers are located in the United States – the company's headquarters are in California. On average, one of these facilities used 450,000 gallons of water per day in 2021. But consumption varies according to geographic location: the US data center with the highest consumption was Council Bluffs, Iowa, followed by Mayes County, Oklahoma.
GOOGLE'S APPROACH
Ben Townsend, who deals with infrastructure and water resources for Google, explained to Axios that the company follows a climate-conscious cooling approach, i.e. aware of the environmental and climate impact of the water and energy consumption of its data centres. He added that Google tries to determine the most effective method to cool each plant, and that – when possible – it does not use fresh water but non-potable or waste water.
According to Townsend, the cooling system used by Google, which uses water loops instead of air conditioners, reduces the energy consumption of data centers by 10 percent: in terms of emissions, considering the current composition of the American electricity mix, the saving is 300 thousand tons of CO2.
THE COMMITMENT TO WATER AND ENERGY
Google has pledged to replenish more water than it consumes by 2030. By the same date, the company wants to power its data centers exclusively with electricity generated from zero-carbon sources such as wind and hydroelectricity.
Read also: Renewables and more: all Amazon's moves on clean energy
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/cosa-fara-google-per-contenere-il-consumo-dacqua-nei-centri-dati/ on Thu, 01 Dec 2022 06:33:49 +0000.