Big Tech under pressure to act on data centres’ thirst for water

Financial Times - 21/03
Calls for a rethink on taking a scarce resource to cool overheated facilities are growing in the US

Booming demand for artificial intelligence tools, accelerated by the uptake of generative AI, is putting an increasing strain on water supplies to cool the IT infra­structure underpinning the technology. Now, the companies operating these data centres are facing calls to make the facilities much more efficient and subject to greater regulation.

In the US, Virginia state legislators have advanced a bill aimed at addressing data centres’ water use. The bill would authorise municipalities to require centres to submit water use estimates as part of building requirements. Virginia is currently home to one of the world’s biggest concentrations of data centres, used by companies such as Amazon, Goog...
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