With the rapid growth of the data center industry, we have had to face up to the environmental challenges and sustainability issues it brings. More and more people are concerned about the energy consumption of facilities and the water consumption of data centers in water-scarce areas.
According to Hong Kong's IDC New Horizon Internet, Las Vegas, Phoenix and Nevada are becoming the forefront of data center expansion in the United States. The massive computing demands of these data centers consume tens of millions of liters of water per day to cool a constantly running server farm.
This background has given rise to the concept of "waterless" data centers, and in recent years several internationally renowned data center operators such as Aligned Data Centers and Edged Energy have introduced the concept of waterless cooling systems, claiming to save billions of litres of water.
However, some industry analysts have pointed out that the concept of "no water" can be misleading. If this logic is true, then any data center can be called a "carbon-free" data center as long as it does not emit carbon emissions, even without the use of green energy.
The reality is that a "waterless" data center site doesn't consume a drop of water, but it still consumes tens of megawatts of electricity. Usually this electricity comes from fossil fuels or nuclear power plants, which themselves require large amounts of water for cooling. But many data center operators don't take this into account when they operate their facilities without water.
Sean Farney, vice president of data center strategy for the Americas at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), said that while the operation of waterless data centers does come with higher power consumption, it is also a sustainable way to operate in arid or water-scarce regions.