AI's thirst for power is only making things worse
Concerns over the environmental impact of datacenters in the US state of Virginia are being raised again amid claims their water consumption has stepped up by almost two-thirds since 2019, and AI could make it worse., water consumption by bit barns in some areas has increased markedly over the past five years by almost two-thirds. It cites data gathered by freedom of information requests to claim that more than 1.85 billion US gallons was used in 2023, up from 1.13 billion gallons in 2019.
Those figures came from water authorities in Northern Virginia in Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, and Fauquier counties. Water is typically used in datacenters for cooling, and the FT points to anxiety over expected increases in demand for computing infrastructure due to AI, which is particularly power intensive during processing for training of large models. It reported that some existing facilities are in water-stressed regions, including parts of Virginia suffering from droughts.
There has already been considerable growth in the datacenter ecosystem in the area concerned, with trade body the Northern Virginia Technology CouncilConcerns were raised previously about datacenters eating up land and available electricity as well as water resources in Virginia.
The bigger bit barn operators such as AWS have certainly pledged to take action over water consumption, with AWS announcing back in 2022 itslast year that water consumption at its facilities had increased by a third, blaming the boom in generative AI adoption.to force datacenter operators on its patch to cut water use, including fitting flow restrictors or charging operators more at peak times.
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