The proliferation of data centers worldwide has raised more than a few environmental concerns. The most obvious one is the power requirement, but regional water consumption has just as bad (or even worse) an effect, as people in rural Georgia have come to realize. Government authorities everywhere have taken notice, including the Malaysian state of Johor, which is now reportedly nuking all proposals for Tier 1 and Tier 2 data centers.
Johor is the nation's tech hub and has attracted substantial international investment and tens of data centers, creating thousands of highly specialized jobs. However, the thirst for water has led the authorities to drown out any notion of building data centers that are not Tier 3 or 4. In fact, official Amira Aisya specifically brought up what happened in Georgia. That particular story isn't the only one, as citizens in Las Cenizas, Mexico, might also have strong words on the topic.
Data centers fall into four categories: the bottom two have single cooling and power paths, while the larger, higher-end ones have multiple systems. Crucially, they tend to have far better power efficiency (and thus lower water consumption) than Tier 1 and Tier 2, thanks to better planning and the use of more frugal hardware.
The Johor government estimates a low-tier data center's water intake at around 40 to 50 million liters a day, a worrisome figure. In contrast, water consumption at Tier 3 and Tier 4 reportedly hovers around 200,000 liters/day, a figure the officials say compares to a typical industrial load.
The authorities understandably want all new data centers to meet higher environmental impact standards, aligned with international benchmarks. To understand the scale of the issue, Johor currently has 51 data center projects: 17 in operation, 11 under construction, and 23 approved.
If you're wondering where that water is going, it's for evaporation cooling towers in open-loop arrangements. There are multiple approaches to reduce the figure, including underwater data centers. Nvidia itself has come up with a redesign that claims to improve water consumption by 300x by using closed-loop systems, similar in concept to CLCs inside gaming and workstation PCs.
Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.
