By 2028, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory forecasts that U.S. data centers could use as much as 12% of the nation's electricity. The reason: generative AI. Since 2022, AI innovation by four leading tech companies — Google, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon — has led to annual increases in both energy and water consumption. So, in this episode, Short Wave co-host Emily Kwong probes huge water footprint of AI. We begin with the rise of data centers, then look at how computers came to need so much water and, finally, what tech companies are doing to try to turn the ship around. P.S. Part 2 talks about the leading solutions in the green AI movement. So don't miss our Friday episode! Curious about tech and the environment? Email us at [email protected] — we'd love to hear from you! Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwaveLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What is the environmental impact of AI data centers?
Hey Shore Wavers, it's Regina Barber with my co-host, Emily Kwong.
Hey, Em. Hi, Gina. So today, our episode starts with water. And someone who's been thinking about water for a long time. He says maybe that's because of where he grew up.
The official name is Kang'er Chong, and the town only had like 50,000 people at that time.
Chapter 2: Who is Sha Lairen and why is his research important?
This is Sha Lairen. He's from a coal mining town in northern China... Where growing up, water was really scarce. So he learned how to make every drop count.
We only had water access for like half an hour each day. So we just had to use water very wisely.
So he grew up very water conscious. And now at UC Riverside, Xiaolei studies the water footprint of the tech industry. Because as you know, Gina, as the tech industry has grown, so too have data centers.
Right, these data centers that are those huge buildings filled with hundreds of thousands of computers that store cloud data and do a lot of computing for AI. Those computers can get really hot.
Right, which is why water, you know, chilled H2O, has become an ally in keeping those computers cool. And Chalet wanted to know exactly how much water was being used. But his early research, some of the first ever studies on water efficiency in data centers... Kind of met with crickets.
Back in 2013, there was no attention at all. Zero.
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Chapter 3: How do data centers use water and energy?
But then in 2022, OpenAI's ChatGPT took the internet by storm and people started to look at Shale's work.
The amount of water that AI uses is astonishing. AI needs water. People are saying that every time you use ChatGPT, you're using... ChatGPT uses this much water for a hundred... Where did that water come from?
Just to train a large language AI model and keep a data center cool can consume hundreds of thousands of liters of fresh water. And by consume, I mean that the water evaporates and doesn't necessarily return to the local watershed.
Like the water turns into vapor, goes up in the air and does not come down to that location. Not necessarily. That's water consumption. Yeah.
It's where the water is no longer available for reuse anymore. In 2023, for example, Google's data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, consumed nearly one billion gallons of potable water.
Wow. OK, so I know data centers also use a lot of energy, primarily like fossil fuels, but I guess they're also using like a ton of water.
Yes. And it's because of AI infrastructure. Now, unless you live near a data center or a power plant, AI infrastructure is mostly invisible. And my goal with this reporting was just to pull back the curtain and ask what toll this is all taking on the environment.
Today on the show, the first in a two-part series on why the true environmental footprint of AI is so elusive.
Starting with the rise of data centers and how computer architecture got to the point of needing gallons of water in the first place.
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Chapter 4: What methods are used to cool data centers?
Yeah, I've seen them before. It makes me think of like a library.
Yes, yes. It's like a computer library, except smaller. The floor is raised, so there's this void below that allows cool air to flow up through a bunch of grills and chill the computers. Benjamin Lee is a professor who studies computer architecture at UPenn, and he explained to me how air cooling basically works.
You push the cool air through the front of the machines, and all the warm air gets pushed out the back.
And then what happens is a refrigerant takes the heat outside the building where it gets dissipated into the air.
Yeah.
But the thing about an air cooling system like this is it requires a lot of electricity. So some systems also use water to help pull heat away from the data center.
Yeah, which is smart because water is so much better at transferring heat than air. Yeah, your physics degree really pays off at a time like this. Just in these moments. But where does this warm water go?
Well, a lot of it gets sent to a cooling tower and is evaporated. You can think of it like sweat. The data center is the brain. It needs to be cooled down because it's getting hotter and hotter in this era of AI.
I think the difficulty has been... That the air conditioning infrastructure is having trouble keeping up with the latest in GPUs and how closely packed GPUs are.
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Chapter 5: Why is water consumption increasing in AI development?
Which, quick sidebar, we should note that they're all financial supporters of NPR. Amazon also pays to distribute some of NPR's content. Yes.
And Amazon does not disclose how many gallons of water they consume. They only report their water usage effectiveness or WUE. So we don't know how much water they consume. We do not. Oh, wow. Okay. We have a better sense from Google, Microsoft, and Meta. Since 2021, all three have reported a bigger water footprint, meaning they are consuming more and more water lost to evaporation every year.
So who's consuming the most? Google. So in 2023, and this is according to their own report, consumption across all their data centers totaled 6.4 billion gallons. That's enough to irrigate 43 golf courses in the southwestern U.S., Although keep in mind, that is nothing compared to how much water is used by agriculture. I mean, 43 golf courses sound like still a lot of water to me.
It's a lot of water. Yeah. And the concern, of course, is that once the water is evaporated, it's not available for reuse.
Right.
So just to give you an example of how this can play out badly, the Dalles, that's a city 80 miles east of Portland, Oregon, is where Google built its first data center. And residents noticed a change to the local water supply. Maybe.
The water level in our wells dropped 15 feet.
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Chapter 6: How transparent are tech companies about their water usage?
This is Dallas resident Don Rasmussen talking to the AP in 2021.
When you have dry conditions, you know, it's stressful on the plants, the animals and the people in the community.
So the Oregonian, the local paper, asked Google, hey, what are your water numbers? And Google said, no way, we're not going to tell you. It's a trade secret. And after a year-long legal battle, it came to light that Google was using a quarter of all the water available in town. That is so much. Now, this surge of water use, I was like, why? Why so much water?
It can be directly traced to the AI renaissance. And that's because tech companies are searching for what Benjamin Lee at UPenn calls the next killer app.
The search engine was a killer app. Another example of that would be a recommendation system that social media feeds use to recommend ads and content. That was a killer app. But we don't have that for generative AI.
Ben says that's why you're seeing things like AI overviews in Google Search or AI chatbots on Instagram or AI product summary reviews on Amazon.
There's a lot of generative AI being invoked on your behalf as these companies try to figure out what it's good for.
Which is, you know, their prerogative. But in the meantime, there doesn't seem to be a standard for these companies to report the details of their water use.
So that golf course number that you mentioned earlier, we only know that because Google freely reported it in like a progress report on their own climate pledges. Can you tell me more about those pledges? Like what has each company promised to do for the climate?
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