Seven-ish Questions on Data Center Water Use

Everyone's got a hot take on data center water use, and most of them are garbage. This week Jacob and Igor skip the outrage and give you seven questions to help you decide whether a given data center is something you're on board with: where it's built, how it's cooled, where the power comes from, who owns it, and who's footing the bill (you'll have to listen for the other two). They test them against SpaceX's Colossus facility in Memphis, unpermitted gas turbines, a drought-prone aquifer, and a stalled water recycling plant included. The guys also get into why "zero water consumption" claims can be misleading once you understand the difference between withdrawal and consumption. Plus: a bonus rant on why data centers in space aren't happening anytime soon. Chapters(00:00) - Intro (08:14) - Is It Really an "AI" Data Center? (13:28) - How Is It Cooled, and Where's the Water From? (19:48) - Where Is It? (29:03) - Collosus as a Worked Example (35:14) - How Is It Powered? (38:15) - Who Owns It & Who Pays? (47:58) - Is This Too Complicated? Seven Questions Recapped (54:35) - Bonus: Data Centers in Space (58:48) - Outro Critical LinksBelow are the most important links for this episode. For more, visit the episode page on Kairos.fm.Our World in Data article - How Much Energy Do Data Centers and Artificial Intelligence Use?EcoLogits webpageACM paper - Not All Water Consumption Is Equal: A Water Stress Weighted Metric for Sustainable ComputingPreprint - Small Bottle, Big Pipe: Quantifying and Addressing the Impact of Data Centers on Public Water SystemsPolitico article - Musk promised his data center would reuse water. That's now stalled.IEEE paper - Press Release Ethics: Performative Ethics in AI Consortia and Industry AssociationsHarvard Environmental Law Program PDF - Extracting Profits from the Public