EDITORIAL: Opinions Require Context
Yes, data centers use water. They also help save it.
By Curry Roberts
PRESIDENT OF THE FREDERICKSBURG REGIONAL ALLIANCE
Last Thursday’s and Saturday’s op-eds in the Advance were thought-provoking, with each touching on water usage by data centers. In the interest of developing a fuller opinion about the issue, however, some context is important.
Thursday’s column correctly noted that the agricultural industry is far-and-away the largest water user worldwide. However, artificial intelligence driven by data centers is responsible for reducing that usage.
As a former board member and past chair of Southern States Cooperative, I sat through numerous briefings about the advantages of precision ag (PA) technologies. These tools use field mapping to allow farmers to more precisely place inputs where they are needed, as opposed to traditional broadcast methods.
There is a lot of data about the savings this generates, but one source conservatively estimates that PA has led to a 4% reduction in water use alone in the United States.
That doesn’t sound like much, but it’s equivalent to 750,000 Olympic swimming pools.
Water reduction isn’t the only benefit of PA, as it has allowed for significant reductions in the use of chemicals and fertilizer, too.
It takes data centers to power the software and sensors to deliver these results.
Saturday’s column raised concerns about how much water data centers use, and how secretive the industry has been with their information.
Yes, in summer months, data centers do use a lot of water. However, evaporation is not water lost. It is returned to Earth as rain.
One comparative point might also be helpful.
The average 150-acre golf course, depending on location, uses up to 200 million gallons of water annually for irrigation.
Additionally, only 12% of golf courses have adopted utilizing reuse water, but reductions have been achieved by utilizing similar technologies as deployed by farmers.
This, again, requires the computing capability of data centers. I love golf but we don’t need it to run a 21st century economy.
Finally, while I agree with the assertion that the industry is too secretive, it is still a relatively young industry, and hopefully they will learn.
In their day, the Mellons, Carnegies, and Fords were also very secretive about their business practices for competitive reasons.
Our version of these innovators – Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Gates – seem to have not studied much history on how disliked in their day their innovative forebears were. It would help if they did, but I digress.
A final tidbit for thought.
In the 1951 anti-nuclear weapons movie “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” an alien visitor – Klaatu – came to warn the citizens of Earth that an intergalactic coalition would not tolerate proliferating nuclear armaments into space.
As a demonstration of their technological superiority, Klaatu turned off the world’s electric power for just 30 minutes and chaos ensued.
I wonder how we would react if all data centers paused operations for 30 minutes?
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