Artificial intelligence is in the crosshairs of regulators, companies and, now, also environmental defenders due to the use of natural resources they consume. Although, “as a linguistic model of artificial intelligence” -says ChatGPT- “I do not consume any physical resources”, it responds quickly to our questions.
This artificial intelligence, which responds as if it were human, is one of the new technological tools called to revolutionize the way of communicating and interacting with the entire ecosystem of the Network of networks. However, as she well confirms physical presence, she does have:
According to the estimates of the consultants, the energy consumption of the data centers oscillates between 1 and 2% of the total world consumption. “It is estimated that consumption by 2030 will be 30%,” says Aurora Gómez, a member of the Tu nube seca mi río initiative. “And I can assure you that it will be more, because the use of the internet is increasing with streaming and artificial intelligence,” she adds.
In the same way that an application runs on the mobile or on the computer, these services also run on computers called servers. An Internet consultation is a ‘connection’ to these virtual computers that are located in large data centers.
Facilities that can range from 100 square meters to more than 100,000 square meters, such as the future Meta center, formerly known as Facebook, in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo). According to data from Spain Data Center, Spanish soil has 15 data centers. However, other calculations raise the figure to over a hundred, but the key is that “they have a spectacular size,” warns Gómez.
“To send kitten memes I don’t want to leave an entire city without water”
aurora gomez
member of the initiative Your cloud dries my river
These are the hyperscale data centers and Cisco research indicated that 53% of the servers would be in this type of facility in 2021. «When there were 5 hyperscale data centers in the United States we did not care, but now we are putting 15 in each country and it is outrageous”, details the promoter of the initiative Your cloud dries my river.
These critical facilities are associated with US technology giants such as Google, Amazon, Facebook, IBM or Microsoft. “They ensure that the larger the size, the greater the efficiency,” says Gómez.
The latest environmental report from the search engine giant states that the company’s consumption of electricity and water worldwide, for data centers and other uses, doubled in 2021 compared to five years ago, because the advancement of technology implies a greater exploitation of natural resources (water, minerals and energy).
The carbon footprint of data centers is measured by three variables: electricity consumption (to run the servers), water consumption (to cool the servers), and the useful life of the equipment (which affects the frequency of replacements). .
The numbers differ in terms of the size and data traffic that these centers have. The fork varies from 7,600 cubic meters of drinking water per day of consumption by Google in Uruguay to the 660 million liters of water that Meta plans to use in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo). A consumption that has a vital function: refrigeration. According to data from DGTL Infra, the average daily water consumption of a single data center building is approximately 24.9 million liters of water per year, or 68,219 liters per day.
How much water is it? The answer is provided by the National Statistics Institute and the per capita consumption data: 133 liters per day. A multiplication and the result: 48,545 liters per year.
Why so much water?
The answer is given by Robert Assink, general director of Digital Realty in Spain: “We use water for air conditioning.” The rooms that ‘shelter’ these servers are designed to operate between 20ºC and 22ºC, “if these temperatures increase, the probability of equipment failure increases,” says David Mytton, a sustainable computing researcher at the University of Oxford, in an article published in Nature.
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The heat, from the data centers, is combated with water, energy or submersion. Microsoft has in the study phase, after two years of work, the installation of CPD under the sea. “Not only is a greener future possible, but it is economically practical,” they say. “We are aware that we have to minimize consumption,” adds Assink.
Where appropriate, the Digital Realty facilities are located in Silicon Alley in Madrid. From the outside it looks like an old industrial estate east of the capital, but more than half of the internet traffic in Spain passes inside the buildings. “We are in the center of the city and we use water from the Canal de Isabel II”, reveals the manager of Digital Realty. “In other places we operate with water from the sea, from the river and even from groundwater tables and our consumption is much lower than other data centers,” he adds.
Areas with water stress
The old Facebook has set its sights on Toledo, specifically in Talavera de la Reina, where it hopes to install a large data center of more than 103,000 square meters by 2030. The landing of the American giant will mean an injection of 1,000 million euros to the region and 250 jobs.
68,219
liters of drinking water per day
use data centers
However, according to company data, it will consume close to 660 million liters of clean water per year in an area where the closest reservoir, La Portiña, is at 40% of its capacity.
With these data, Meta would ‘drink’ the water of 4,181 Talavera residents. “To send kitten memes, I don’t want to leave an entire city without water,” denounces Aurora Gómez. “We all know other places with these problems,” she adds.
The drought that plagues southern Europe is also reflected in the north of the Continent. The water cuts are not exclusive to Spain or Portugal, they also occurred last summer in the Netherlands. There, the government restricted the use of water for irrigation and came up against a harsh reality.
The region has Microsoft and Google data centers that, they say, cool their servers with air. Although consumption does not say the same. When the data center was built, located in Hollands Kroon, a municipality of about 47,000 people, Microsoft indicated that consumption would range between 12 and 20 million liters. However, the actual consumption of drinking water during 2021 was 84 million liters. “It was a scandal and the consumption of the Meta data center will be much higher than that,” reveals Ana Valdivia, a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute.
“The solution is to make moratoriums,” defends Gómez. An initiative that has been taken in other countries, such as Ireland or Singapore to reflect on what type of data centers you want to develop, what characteristics they should have and what is their best location.
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