AI Is Ruining Some Water Supply
AI electricity use is triggering the use of cola in some places. Renewable energy is not grown fast enough to feed the hungry server farms. Now, it turns out they are doing different environmental damage. They use water to cool them, and this is causing ecological disasters.
According to Bloomberg, “Data centers in the US and around the world are disproportionately built in highly water-stressed areas. The AI boom has only made it worse: Two thirds of new data centers built or planned since 2022 are in places that already have high competition for scarce water resources.” There is already documentation that they have started to compete with residential use, particularly air conditioning, Bitcoin mining, and regular electricity use.
Air Conditioning.
The water problem may be the less severe of these. Electricity use means more fossil fuel use for the time being. New nuclear reactors will not come online for years. Restrictions by the Trump Administration have undermined wind energy. While solar is growing rapidly, it is not enough.
Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, and its use has been dropping. “U.S. production of all types of coal has declined over the past two decades. In 2023, the United States produced 578 million short tons (MMst) of coal, or less than half of the amount produced in 2008 when U.S. coal production peaked, according to our most recent Annual Coal Report,” the US Energy Information Administration reports.
Bloomberg reports, “Tech companies aren’t ignorant to this dilemma. A number of them have proposed or implemented ways to cool their servers that draw less water.” So far, there is no evidence that has happened
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