UK government inexplicably tells citizens to delete old emails and pictures to save water during national drought — 'data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems'
"The current water shortfall situation in England now defined as a 'nationally significant incident.'"
The UK government has instructed citizens to delete old emails and pictures to help conserve water, following the announcement of a "nationally significant" water shortage. However, the advice isn't up to snuff, as deleting emails and pictures should have no significant effect on water consumption, and might even make it worse for data centers that use certain types of evaporative cooling.
Guidance published Tuesday states "the current water shortfall situation in England is now defined as a 'nationally significant incident.'" Five areas of the country are officially in drought, with six more experiencing prolonged dry weather following the six driest months leading up to July since 1976. According to the report, rivers and reservoir levels continue to recede, and August isn't looking much wetter.
Naturally, the government is trying to encourage citizens to save water, and lists a number of very reasonable actions concerned residents can take to reduce their water usage. Measures such as collecting rainwater, fixing a leaky toilet, and using wastewater to water plants, alongside reducing shower times and not watering your lawn, can help reduce water usage. Finally, the article states, "Delete old emails and pictures as data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems."
As some onlookers have noted, the recommendation rings a little hollow when juxtaposed next to the UK government's commitment to turbocharge growth using AI. Perhaps more pertinently, the advice rings hollow because it's likely not very sensible. While it's true that data centers do consume large amounts of water through evaporative cooling (where it's used), the vast majority of this power draw comes from CPU and GPU computation, not the storage of pictures and emails. Once the data is stored, the storage devices generate very little heat and are often spun down (placed into low- or no-power states) and called upon only when needed.
The impact of an individual deleting emails and old photos on data center water usage is likely to be so infinitesimal as to be considered futile. In fact, rooting out old emails and photos and deleting them from your online archives might well use more energy and water than storing them in the first place, making this a counterproductive exercise.
Furthermore, if the data you're deleting to try and save water is stored in a data center outside of the UK, you'll actually end up saving water (or more likely not, as we've discussed) in some other country. The UK doesn't have universal laws mandating that citizen data has to be stored within the country, so this is a real possibility.
So if you're in the UK and looking to save water during this particularly dry spell, probably best to try some of the other options first.
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Stephen is Tom's Hardware's News Editor with almost a decade of industry experience covering technology, having worked at TechRadar, iMore, and even Apple over the years. He has covered the world of consumer tech from nearly every angle, including supply chain rumors, patents, and litigation, and more. When he's not at work, he loves reading about history and playing video games.
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DS426 Great advice. Delete your data, which will actually increase consumption from additional CPU and drive utilization, because the advice makes some people in the government feel better.Reply
Laughable yet sad at the same time. -
hotaru251 pro tip: if you are trying to reduce water usage....target the ones USING the most water...those very same data centers you want people to stupidly delete stuff from...Reply -
chaz_music Well, yes long term that does reduce heat generation due to less data management, but so would not streaming videos and music. People aren't going to do that either. Not motivated enough.Reply
When I lived there in the UK, it rained every day. Every. Damn. Day. Then one day they said on the news there was a terrible drought. It was still raining every day like clockwork. A few days later I visited an engineer from work at his flat. As we walked through the flat I noticed a faucet leaking into the sink and he had not bothered to fix the washer - because they paid a flat bill for water. I bet the water going by was in excess of 200 gallons per day. It did not matter to him what the water usage was. He was more worried about the cost of a washer from the DIY store.
The other thing that was a shocker as an American living in the UK was that the utility would schedule with you every 3 months to see your meters. Because they were inside your flat. I bet they love the new RF based smart meters now. -
Neilbob They need to be educating people like my knob-head neighbours about not showering twice a day and doing a load of laundry for every pair of socks and underpants.Reply
Would be a bit more effective than causing a stink about files that may not even necessarily be stored in the UK, and even if they are, I can't imagine for a second that it has anywhere close to the water usage impact caused by the toss-baggery of inconsiderate members of the everyday citizenry.
</angrycodger> -
Kentmos No worries. Norway to the rescue. When UK and other countries in EU lack power, Norway exports electricity whenever needed, draining the dams to small mudpits, and the Norwegian people gets the bill.Reply
Live data here:
https://www.statnett.no/en/for-stakeholders-in-the-power-industry/data-from-the-power-system/ -
Dementoss Reply
Such a long dry period of weather, together with 4 heatwaves, so far, is highly unusual here in the UK so, we are not prepared for it. We have no desalination plants to enable use of sea water.vanadiel007 said:The UK is an island, they are surrounded by water...
As for silly, ill thought out advice from government, that's not really big news. -
SonoraTechnical Must be those AI farms are going through tremendous amounts of water in an attempt to cool themselves off after they've been busy burning CPU cycles raiding and scanning all of my personal and junk emails....Reply
AI Big Brother is breaking a sweat learning from us and therefore contributing heavily to your water shortage..
Fear not... Big Data has a solution... They are attempting to building AI Data Centers in the Desert.. Maybe they figure we just won't notice yet another water shortage here..
Kudos to Civil Unreast.. Residents of Pima County were victorious (for now) in halting the City of Tucson trying to annex county property to approve the construction of an AI Data Center called Project Blue. It was estimated that it would have consumed as much electricity as every single home in the Tucson Metro Area (that's over 1 million people in the metro area). Ultimately, it was discovered that Amazon was behind the project via a leak.. so the whole project was rather clandestine with no real guidance on where they were going to find the water.
Small victory, but take them where you can. It took 3 raucious meetings to get politicians to yield to the will of the people. Boo Hoo Realtors and Developers are calling it a missed opportunity... Rather than a win for the fragile eco-system that is the Sonoran Desert. We are very deep into an extended drought with our temperatures reaching 40-45degC daily.