00:00Protests against tech giants are erupting everywhere, in Chile, Uruguay and the United
00:07States. While water pipes run dry and the soil dries out, Amazon, Microsoft and Google are
00:15building massive data centers in regions already suffering from drought. Computing power requires
00:21enormous amounts of water, leaving little for local communities and agriculture. More data,
00:27more cloud computing, more AI. And it's accelerating with no signs of slowing down. Environmental
00:34protection or technological progress? Is it possible to have both? Data centers and the battle for water.
00:41Typically a data center is planned and then there's a lot of pushback. There have been protests
00:50in Latin America. The region is facing extreme drought and water shortages. Uruguay especially
00:56struggled in 2023 during its worst drought in 75 years. And then Google happened to show up at
01:06exactly the same time. Google wanted to use 7.6 million liters of water per day,
01:14enough to supply 22,000 people. And during a drought, an extreme water crisis.
01:19Daniel Pena is a scientist and activist. He's critical of the lack of community input.
01:27There was no public dialogue and no public hearing. The project was classified as category B,
01:35considered low to moderate risk. As a result, public involvement was minimal.
01:41Daniel Pena is concerned about significant environmental impacts from the Google Cloud
01:48project. The Santa Lucia River is important for the capital city Montevideo. The battle over water
01:55has already begun here. When there's no clean water from the tap, bottled water is the only option left.
02:01Not everyone can afford bottled water. People on low incomes don't have the money.
02:11The water tastes bad. It causes stomach aches. Sometimes even headaches.
02:19AI and cloud computing are booming. Data centers, the backbone of AI,
02:24need massive computing power and water. Global demand is growing exponentially.
02:32These huge centers are often built in some of the world's driest regions. And resistance is growing.
02:38People want more transparency, a say in the process, clean air and clean water.
02:44That's the situation in Uruguay in the summer of 2025. Construction on Google's 850 million dollar
02:51cloud project near Montevideo has been underway for a year and will take more than two.
02:56It promises jobs and innovation and local and national leaders see it as a key investment.
03:06I think the process was good. I think it's clear that it's now in the construction phase
03:13and that the project hasn't caused any major inconveniences.
03:16We hope that once it's up and running they can generate synergies that can attract other types
03:28of industries and activities associated with technological innovation.
03:35What companies are we talking about? Who are the major global players in the computing power business?
03:40It's the big three. Amazon subsidiary, AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. Together they account for two-thirds of the market.
03:51Why is so much being built? Because we want it. Industry, the economy, society. The demand is there.
03:58But the environmental impact is significant. In many large data centers much of the cooling water simply evaporates.
04:05That's because it's not reused in a closed loop but sent through cooling towers where it absorbs heat from servers and escapes as vapor.
04:20In fact evaporation is the most efficient way of removing heat. That's why we for example we sweat.
04:27When we get too hot that evaporation of the of our sweat off of our skin is an effective way of keeping us cool and keeping us from overheating.
04:35Aron Wemhoff is a data center sustainability expert. Google alone is now said to consume 20 billion liters of water annually in the US.
04:46That's a lot of bathtubs. But let's put that in Olympic sized swimming pools. 50 meters long that would be 8000 pools.
04:56I do know several colleagues at Google and I know that Google is actively trying to do things to mitigate their water footprint.
05:04Worldwide data center water consumption is increasing drastically and is expected to more than double by 2030.
05:11In fact following recent protests Google has spoken of a commitment to responsible water use
05:17and now plans to cool its data center with air instead of water.
05:23Sounds like a simple solution but it's not.
05:26Water cools more effectively due to its physical properties.
05:30Air cooling ultimately requires more energy.
05:34And environmentally friendly electricity is often not sufficiently available for data centers.
05:40That's when coal and gas power plants come into play.
05:42So maybe water cooling after all?
05:45It is possible or likely that many waterless cooling systems are less energy efficient
05:53compared to systems that utilize evaporation.
05:56And as a result you end up just having a higher water footprint upstream at the power generation source
06:03as opposed to at the data center site itself.
06:06We've seen this before. In Chile for instance where Google's proposed data center drew public backlash
06:13over concerns about excessive water use. Santiago's environmental court partially revoked
06:18the project's approval citing insufficient consideration of groundwater and climate impacts.
06:23Now Google has to revise its plans and will likely switch to air cooling.
06:28So why build so many data centers in hot, dry regions with scarce water?
06:34The main reason for looking for drier areas is both an efficiency reason and an avoidance of corrosion.
06:44The humidity can't be too high, warns researcher Lorena Jaume-Palassi,
06:48or the costly equipment will begin to corrode.
06:51If you use something else than drinkable water to cool,
06:55if you are using liquid cooling. So this means that you need drinkable water to avoid corrosion
07:02to cool down your data center and you enrich that water with some sort of chemical stuff.
07:10So this means you cannot bring back that water into the normal water circuit.
07:15So conflicts in Chile as well. But what could be done better when choosing locations?
07:20I will say that my opinion as being somebody who is pushing for minimizing the environmental impact
07:27of data centers, I would like to see more data centers being built near large bodies of water
07:31in cooler climates. Let's turn to Northern Europe, specifically Sweden. In Falun, about 200 kilometers
07:38from Stockholm, there's a remarkable data center pushing the boundaries of design and sustainability.
07:43It's all about resource use, water, electricity and more. In Falun, there's no shortage of water.
07:51It's drawn from a nearby lake, treated, stored in tanks and sprayed to cool the system using the
07:56principle of evaporation. The server rooms themselves are also cooled with water,
08:02much of which is reused where possible. Large air ducts blow cold air into the server rooms.
08:09This uses electricity. But here, it's 100% renewable. Sweden relies on hydroelectric power,
08:16both large and small scale, and wind energy also supports the data center.
08:21And the processor heat is not just released into the environment.
08:28Some of the water, of the reused heat, is distributed to a district heating plant just
08:35as a neighbor of us, where we supply them with heat in their manufacturing of the wooden pellets for furnaces.
08:49Pierre Wellander is the Falun site manager. The local energy provider is just across the street.
08:55Pellets are dried and burned in a small plant that supplies district heating.
08:59Sweden is well suited for data centers. There's plenty of water, wind, and its northern location helps too.
09:09During winter time, we have cold temperature. We have like 20, normally 20 degrees below zero,
09:16which gives us free cooling, actually.
09:19So just let the cold air in. It might not be entirely fair to compare Sweden with Chile or Uruguay,
09:26but some ideas might still be transferable. Take wood for example. In Sweden it's a sustainable,
09:32eco-friendly building material that binds carbon dioxide.
09:38Now we're up to 95% of wood. And we find out that this is the most perfect way of building a computer center.
09:46Back to the point of community input. Falun faced similar concerns as in Uruguay and Chile.
09:52And through that whole process, there has been a great focus on having a dialogue with the local
10:01population. The people of Falun has been offered to pose and ask any kind of question. And of course,
10:13they've also been answered when asked those questions in a transparent and open way.
10:21Overall, northern countries offer more pros than cons for data centers,
10:26even with factors like higher humidity. At 5,427 the US has the most data centers,
10:34followed by Germany at a distant second. In Latin America, there are relatively few.
10:40Another one just opened in Memphis, Tennessee, a data center for artificial intelligence.
10:46City officials see it as the future, but the locals are furious. Especially after learning Elon Musk and
10:53his chatbot Grok are behind it. Progress, yes, but not at people's expense. It was built in just 122 days,
11:03and it's still growing. The process and how this business transaction took place was without the
11:14knowledge of myself and other council members. I found out on the news. Water is life. This is an
11:25absolutely critical resource that everything needs for survival. Industries do need water for their
11:32process. Businesses do need water to make their revenue, but that should never be put in front of
11:38the drinking water needs of residents. People are raising concerns about air and groundwater pollution
11:44and ignored environmental laws. Gas turbines are running to generate electricity, producing emissions,
11:51which, they say, didn't initially have the proper permits. Once again, too little information for
11:57those affected. Perhaps a textbook case of how not to do things. Tech giants face accusations of lacking
12:04transparency. Amazon, Microsoft and Google are withholding key data on water and electricity use.
12:10Google also declined our request to visit their site in Uruguay. At this point, we cannot facilitate a
12:17visit to the site nor an interview. Reliable data on electricity and water is scarce. Most of these other
12:25aspects of water consumption are not being indexed, are not being measured, so it's really very
12:32intransparent. I have my doubts, yes, because until now what we can only do as researchers is try to
12:40use open source. We really don't know how much water they really consume. Water consumption is already high
12:49and projected to double, but data center electricity consumption will also increase by 128 percent by 2030.
12:57We don't know how chip performance will evolve. Will efficiency gains keep up with ever increasing demands?
13:04The Chinese AI chatbot DeepSeq made headlines for needing less computing power to generate responses.
13:12It reportedly uses far less energy than comparable models from OpenAI, Microsoft or Google. Perhaps
13:20future electricity and water demands won't be as high as predicted. Amazon, Microsoft and Google say their
13:27goal is to be water positive by 2030, meaning they'll provide more water than they use. The tech giants have
13:35a clear interest in being efficient and saving energy, but how water positivity will work and whether it's
13:41achievable remains unclear and controversial. High water and energy use, that's likely the price of progress,
13:50but the environment bears the cost. Small steps can help reduce the computing load,
13:55making less resource-intensive videos, using a calculator instead of AI for simple math,
14:01or just using a search engine instead of asking AI.
14:07Data centers are coming, but people want to know what that means for them. Environmental protection
14:12and data production still don't go hand in hand. What's more important to you? Unlimited progress or
14:19the sustainable use of resources? Let us know in the comments.
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