Yassamin Ansari Presses Expert On AI Industry's Added ‘Strain’ On Limited Natural Resources

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During a House Oversight Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) questioned Tyson Slocum, the Energy Program Director at Public Citizen, about utilizing sustainable practices in building data centers.

Transcript

00:00Now I recognize the gentlelady from Arizona, Ms. Ansari, for five minutes.

00:06Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.

00:10My district in Arizona and the surrounding Phoenix metro area is one of the fastest-growing data center hubs in the country.

00:18By 2028, it is expected to be the nation's second-largest concentration of data centers,

00:22behind only Northern Virginia in Mr. Subramanyam's district.

00:26For our national security and economic prosperity, we absolutely need to be global leaders on the artificial intelligence front.

00:33To do that, we will need to keep building more data centers and the infrastructure to support them.

00:38But we also need to do that in a way that's smart, ensuring lasting resiliency in these systems and our energy and water future.

00:45Arizona Public Service, which is the largest power provider in my state,

00:49has projected that data centers will account for 55 percent of its power needs by 2031.

00:54So my first question, Mr. Levy, what are companies doing to lower their power usage going forward?

01:05Thank you, Representative Ansari.

01:07I very much appreciate the question, and we are certainly seeing a great deal of growth in Arizona,

01:11and it has been a great destination for data center employment.

01:14This is an industry that continues to innovate both on energy and water utilization.

01:21I think one of the main things to recognize is that data centers centralize what would otherwise be disparate computing resources,

01:29bring them together under a facility.

01:32In doing so, you see already, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,

01:36about a 600 percent gain in energy efficiency over a disaggregated compute.

01:42That was based on research they did between 2010 and 2018.

01:47That continues.

01:49You're seeing a tremendous lean in on energy efficiency for a variety of reasons,

01:52but one of which is energy is a cost driver,

01:54and our members can pay anywhere from 40 to 60 percent for energy.

01:59Every electron is precious and is managed such.

02:02At the same time, one of the primary functions of a data center is to remove heat from servers that generate heat

02:09and ensure that those servers can continue to perform.

02:14When I went into my first data center facility in 2001,

02:19I had to wear a windbreaker because it was a cool environment, and notably so.

02:27Going into a data center now, you'll find some ambient temperatures in the 80s, maybe even higher,

02:33because the hardware has been able to withstand, based on innovations and design, increasingly high temperatures.

02:40I do want to just indicate there is a fundamental tradeoff right now in cooling technology

02:44between energy efficiency and water efficiency,

02:47and the data center industry does take a lot of thought as they are deploying infrastructure

02:53in locations to make sure that they're aware of the water availability,

02:57the energy availability, the tradeoffs in terms of how they're going to cool those servers.

03:02Thank you so much.

03:02Actually, in our last subcommittee hearing here, we discussed how to strengthen America's energy reliability.

03:08I do strongly believe that the greatest energy source is the energy that we don't use,

03:13and the best way to ensure energy reliability is to innovate,

03:16so that's good to hear that you feel it's moving in that direction.

03:19Mr. Slocum, question for you.

03:21Would you agree that the AI industry and data centers would be more cost-effective

03:25if they use less electricity and therefore spent less on their power bills?

03:30Of course.

03:30The question is, do they have the necessary incentives?

03:34When they're cutting sweetheart deals with a local utility,

03:38their focus is not on efficiency.

03:42It's on obtaining access to that transmission or generation infrastructure.

03:49And so I think it would be helpful to have guide rules from Congress

03:54about energy efficiency and demand response initiatives for the data center industry

04:00to ensure that we prioritize more efficient operations going forward.

04:05So in Arizona and much of the West, as I know that you know,

04:10the most critical resource that we have is water.

04:13And a recent study showed that a single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of drinking water per day.

04:20That means they're not only straining and already limited resources in our state,

04:24but the result also means that water rates are going up for families.

04:27This question is also for you.

04:29What can the AI and data center industries do to use less water while also reducing their strain on the power grid?

04:36Right.

04:36Well, as we just heard Mr. Levy say that one of the big considerations for data center location is the availability of water.

04:44So I think, and out West, water resources are incredibly scarce and becoming more scarce,

04:50and it's a huge challenge.

04:51So what we need to do is to ensure that they are recycling or reusing water resources,

04:59that they are treating those water resources,

05:02that we're not dipping into aquifers or other drinking water resources

05:06just to keep large computer networks from overheating.

05:13And I just want to all wrap by saying, you know, I'm not anti-AI or anti-data center,

05:17but if we really do want to dominate this industry as a country, we need it to be future-proofed.

05:22We need to be innovating in the goals to make less energy and water intensive

05:27if we really want it to be sustainable.

05:29And I don't just mean sustainable in the climate sense,

05:31but sustainable is profitable and a continuously advancing industry.

05:35So thank you so much.

05:36I did want to ask for unanimous consent to enter the following articles into the records.

05:40That's okay, Mr. Chair.

05:42What are the names of the articles?

05:43First, a 2024 article from Business Insider titled,

05:47Google's Water Use is Soaring, AI is Only Going to Make It Worse.

05:512023 article...

05:52Without objection.

05:53Go ahead.

05:542023 article from the Washington Post titled,

05:57A New Front in the Water Wars, Your Internet Use.

06:00Without objection.

06:01And the third piece and a 2024 piece from the University of Tulsa titled,

06:05Data Centers Draining Resources in Water-Stressed Communities.

06:09Without objection.

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