Water on the Line: Can Data Centers Stay Cool?

It’s well understood that the explosive proliferation of data centers—and their increasing size, as hyperscale facilities multiply—are placing significant demands on electrical infrastructure across the U.S.

What has been less recognized till more recently is the issue of water usage, as these massive data centers generate, and must therefore shed, similarly prodigious quantities of heat. Even the U.S. Midwest, home to the Great Lakes, the world’s largest collection of freshwater seas, is facing increasing risks of water overuse, in large measure because of data centers’ demands, a new report contends.

Focused on the management of water needs, the study was produced by the nonprofit, nonpartisan Alliance for the Great Lakes, based in Chicago. It makes the case that despite the immense size of the Great Lakes—they hold 20 percent of the world’s surface fresh water by volume—they are surprisingly vulnerable. For example, the report notes, “Only 1 percent of the total volume in the Great Lakes is replenished each year by rainfall, snowmelt and inflow from groundwater.”

Overuse of Great Lakes water, especially overextraction of groundwater, endangers drinking water for millions of people in surrounding states, according to the report. And climate change further adds to these concerns.

Of particular interest to the commercial real estate industry is data centers’ impact on regional water resources. The report states that a single hyperscale data center, of the kind that can support generative AI, can use more than 365 million gallons of water a year, or as much as that used by 12,000 Americans.

---

READ ALSO: Are Your Data Centers Ready for the Future?

---

Citing industry publication Water Online, the AGL report says that nationally, hyperscale facilities are projected to withdraw as much as 150.4 billion gallons of water over the next five years, or the equivalent of 4.6 million American households.

The most common cooling method currently used in U.S. data centers is evaporative cooling, in which (as the name suggests) most of the water evaporates and is lost to the watershed. Even though other cooling methods, such as liquid immersion or direct-to-chip cooling, use less water and electricity by directly using water to cool equipment, they can introduce contaminants into the process. So, despite being more efficient from a water consumption standpoint, these methods nonetheless pose water quality questions.

Even shifting to cooling systems that need more electricity than water doesn’t necessarily solve water use issues, the report states, “it may be somewhat of a shell game.” The reason is that generating electricity to meet data centers’ cooling needs, whether by fossil fuels or nuclear, also requires water, some of which is lost through evaporation.

Clearly, there are no easy choices here, though there are better and worse ones.

“I would encourage the data center industry to think more holistically about water use,” the report’s author, Helena Volzer, senior source water policy manager for the AGL, told Commercial Property Executive. “If water resources become stretched and demand outpaces supply, in addition to the challenges that poses to our water resources, ecosystems and the environment, the public, and other large water-using businesses and industries like agriculture, it will inhibit the ability of data centers to continue to operate and expand—eventually impacting their own bottom lines.”

Volzer added that data center companies should explore ways to help ensure that water is factored into decisions about where to locate facilities and what kinds of cooling technologies are used. “That includes not only the water the data center will use directly, but also the water used in generating the energy needed to service that facility.”

Efforts to move forward

Those messages about data centers and water are getting through.

In early October, CBRE announced that it was beginning to work with Ecolab to improve water efficiency and quality across some of the nearly 8 billion square feet that CBRE manages. The partnership underscores how sustainability concerns are increasingly central to data center investment decisions.

“Water is increasingly important, especially in sectors like data centers, life sciences and advanced manufacturing,” Rob Bernard, CBRE’s chief sustainability officer, said at the time.

Under the partnership, CBRE will advise its data center clients on operational and sustainability strategies, and Ecolab will use its advanced cooling management technologies to optimize water use.

One area might be the design and implementation of smart water strategies for data centers, which face rising rack densities, heat loads and cooling demands driven by AI workloads.

The increasing importance of water for communities and commercial operations is driving more innovation in water technologies, helping businesses like data centers and manufacturers increase their water efficiency, recycling and reuse, Bernard told CPE. “It’s a win-win; conserving water and energy reduces a company’s costs and its environmental impact.”

One of those innovations is Ecolab’s 3D TRASAR technology for direct-to-chip liquid cooling, which monitors coolant functioning in real time to protect high-performance servers and other critical infrastructure. Related technologies can deliver real-time visibility for operators into water usage across the enterprise.