The rise in mammoth data centers that run the Internet has been in the news because of its enormous energy consumption, largely relying on coal.
But few think about the millions of gallons of water required to keep all those servers cool … except, for Google.
One of the ways Google’s servers use half the energy of a typical data center is because they use water for cooling, rather than energy-hog mechanical chillers.
A typical data center uses hundreds of thousands of gallons of water every day, which got Google thinking –
Servers don’t need water that’s clean enough to drink, so why not use recycled water instead of fresh water?
Their Georgia data center now cools off with 100% recycled water.
"We don’t want to be taking fresh drinking water away from the local communities that we work in," says Joe Kava, Senior Director, Data Center Construction and Operations, in a company video that explains Googles efforts to conserve water.
The Georgia location is one of six data centers in the US – we imagine more will run on recycled water soon.
Data centers consume 1.5-2% of global electricity, growing at 12% a year.
Instead of powering factories with coal, we’re now powering information technologies with coal. Over half the companies Greenpeace rated in How Dirty is Your Data rely on coal for
50%-80% of their energy.
Google still ranks highest in the industry by Greenpeace in its annual "Cool IT Leaderboard."
Because of its attention to efficiency, Google has cut energy use in its data centers 50% and uses less than 1% of the total electricity used by data centers worldwide.
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