5 ms·

Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so mu

Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums. Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Despite this, companies have been trying to be environmentally aware for either moral or marketing purposes to get social permission to build DCs. Despite this, companies are “forced” to build their own “dirty” power sources since political power is disrupting green energy build out. Despite this, demand is still high so that compute costs are continuing to rise. Despite this, our economy is increasingly predicated on a few companies using more compute than geopolitical rivals with cheaper electricity. Despite this, those in power are, again, unwilling to create a compromising policy (aka clean energy) that voters actually would demand before tolerating more DCs. What’s going to lose first? Voters/environment, politicians/the oil lobby, big tech, or the overall american economy?

vrganj 2mo ago
The entire planet will lose as ecosystems die out, food and water supplies run low, refugee crises and global conflicts ramp up. But hey, line go up!
- cyanydeez 2mo ago
  Don't worry; republicans are way ahead of that refugee crises by generation fervent far right ethnic nationalism globally, independently of course.
- simianwords 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - OlivOnTech 2mo ago
    Do you have any source? The global scientific community and more specifically the GIEC have been saying the opposite for years...
    - simianwords 2mo ago
      I have been trying to look for sources myself and I feel like this whole sector is rampant with "noble lies". If you dig into the sources you will find Economic predictions: The most serious mainstream institutions[1] will dress it up us an imminent catastrophe as if humanity itself will collapse if we don't do anything. But once you read the real predictions, you will realise that that it they just say things would be better if you had reduced emissions compared to if we did not, but not compared to today (crucially) Tail risks and irreversible damage: I have read on tail risks, ecological collapse, species death and all of these models are strange and not supported by the mainstream generally. For example [2] article says that 5% of our species will go extinct by 2100 or so. That means more than 200k species! And in the last 50 years fewer than 1500 or so went extinct and it is not some abnormal number. I would encourage you to actually read the studies and see what people believe and the models used. [1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/investing-in-climate-for-growth-and-development_16b7cbc7-en/full-report/accelerated-climate-action-can-deliver-strong-economic-benefits_bee34dd7.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/investing-in-climate-fo... [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461 Edit, can't reply: > Your argument is just linking to credible sources that make the opposite argument as you, and then stating "I disagree" afterwards? Dude, read the first document and then tell me whether they say things will get worse than now or not. They explicitly compare the counterfactual against with or without emissions not against today. This is my issue with this kind of misinformation.
      - estearum 2mo ago
        Your argument is just linking to credible sources that make the opposite argument as you, and then stating "I disagree" afterwards?
      - estearum 2mo ago
        To respond to your edit: The first document is a report on the economic upside of further investment + regulation on climate. It has nothing to do with downside risk of inaction. To the extent it mentions "whether things will get better than now or not," it certainly does not argue things will just be better. > However, current efforts are not keeping pace with rising risks. The world remains on an upwards emissions trajectory, and climate action is losing momentum as countries face a range of competing geopolitical, financial and economic challenges that slow its pace and scale. Without further action climate risks will intensify, and rising disasters, economic instability and financial system vulnerabilities will threaten long-term growth and development. > Actual benefits [of deeper investment + regulation] could be even greater, as uncertain current estimates do not fully account for the economic and social consequences of the increased likelihood of crossing tipping points, such as melting ice sheets or reversing circulation patterns in the ocean. So yes you're reading a publication explicitly written, labeled, and marketed as a positive economic case for deeper investment and regulation, and then saying "see it's just saying things will get better if we invest/regulate, it doesn't talk about downside risk!" But it explicitly says it's not looking at downside risk. Here's the same credible organization in a 2022 report on the downside risks: (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/climate-tipping-points_abc5a69e-en.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/climate-tipping-points_...) > This report reviews evidence that overshooting 1.5°C may push the earth over several tipping points, leading to irreversible and severe changes in the climate system. If triggered, tipping point impacts will rapidly cascade through socio-economic and ecological systems, leading to severe effects on human and natural systems and imposing important challenges for human adaptation > Based on the most recent science and consultations with renowned experts, this report argues that it is no longer appropriate to consider the risk of crossing tipping points as low-probability. Note that inversely, this report does not make a positive argument for the economic growth potential of intervention, because it's a report on downside risk.
  - flufluflufluffy 2mo ago
    Both you and the person you replied to are making claims about the future. Neither of them are true.
- solenoid0937 2mo ago
  This is just pure histrionics, you have no understanding whatsoever of the scale of data center water consumption, electricity consumption, new capacity coming online, etc.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    How much water does a DC use?
    - solenoid0937 2mo ago
      Not much. 0.04% of US water production. For context, that's about 3% of the water consumption of our golf courses, and less than 1% of what we use to water our lawns.
      - loloquwowndueo 2mo ago
        Get off my lawn.
    - quickthrowman 2mo ago
      All US data center water usage is less than the total water used for golf courses or the total water used to grow alfalfa. Less water used in evaporative cooling means more electricity is used for cooling given that the efficiency almost doubles if you add evaporative cooling to a chilled water loop. It’s bad to pump non-renewable fossil aquifer water in Arizona for evaporative cooling, but using cooling towers in an area that gets 30” or more of precipitation per year is probably not going to hurt anything.
    - _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
      The question is does DC building bring added costs to local communities. My small town has a backlog of home builders waiting for permits because of constrained municipal water capacity. We are still paying off the bonds for the last capacity we added. Golf courses/etc are already factored into current costs. Additional new use brings significant cost (bonds to build new capacity), funded by increasing expenses on the entire community, not funded by those who financially benefit from the new build outs. The issue isn't comparative usage to existing hookups, it's new cost burden on the local community where a data center is built. Which is why DC propogandists switched to the golf course measurement, it confuses the original concern, the cost to the community of new DC hookups to municipal water or the very limited amount (of expensive to the community) available hookups that were intended/funded by the community for other purposes.
t0mas88 2mo ago
The overall American economy is going to pay the price in the long term. And current foreign policy is reducing trust in America as a reliable and stable partner, which will make things even worse.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Well yeah, it's basically locked in now that in 50 years America won't be a world power any more. It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best.
  - petcat 2mo ago
    > It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best. If Canada was a US state it would rank around 4th or 5th in terms of economic size and power. There's a lot of doomerism, but I seriously doubt the US is going to lose its top 4 or 5 economies in the next 50 years. If you want to go really doomer, then I think it's actually more likely that Canada would become a US state instead of the US economy shrinking to the size of Canada. But this is all nonsense talk anyway.
  - gruez 2mo ago
    >in 50 years America won't be a world power any more. It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best. What's going to replace it? Rapidly aging China? https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80,format=auto/media-assets/image/20230610_WOC449.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80... https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80,format=auto/media-assets/image/20230610_WOF447.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80... https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=100,format=auto/content-assets/images/20260808_FBC715.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=10...
    - Hnrobert42 2mo ago
      Isn't the US also approaching a peak? https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-POPULATION/AGING/gdpzaomqyvw/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-POPULATION/AGING/gdpzao... There's so many ways to slice the data, I'm not sure there's an apples-to-apples comparison between US and China. However, it's fair to say both economies face demographic headwinds.
mirekrusin 2mo ago
Modern data centers can be designed with near-zero direct water consumption. It isn’t fundamentally necessary to consume huge amounts of water to cool computers. What’s the story with those new data centers? Do they actually choose to do evaporative cooling that people are complaining about or people are complaining about problem that doesn’t exist?
- lokar 2mo ago
  How? In most locations for much of the year you need to reject heat either by evaporating water or using electricity (more water) to run a refrigeration cycle.
- vineyardmike 2mo ago
  It doesn’t matter what the actual reality is. People think that data centers waste water, and they don’t like that. The beef from a single hamburger uses far more water than a year of ChatGPT usage. Few try to reduce consumption in favor of more efficient foods by comparison. It’s about perception.
- ByteOfWood 2mo ago
  They choose evaporative cooling simply because it's cheaper than a closed loop system for energy use and land area.
Permit 2mo ago
> Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Can you tell me how much water a data center uses? If you have strong opinion on the construction of data centers I hope you can answer this basic question about data centers. (Many opposed to them cannot)
- estearum 2mo ago
  Assuming that it's surprisingly little and without pollution concerns, then an acceptable and enforceable policy should be a very simple request, no?
  - Permit 2mo ago
    Yes I agree.
- cogman10 2mo ago
  Depends on the cooling system, but around 1 to 9L per kwh. [1] A lot, but not all, of these datacenters are using evaporative cooling, which is what kicks their water usage so high. So a 40MW datacenter will consume around 4 million liters of water per day if it is evaporatively cooled. [1] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275&item_id=130961 https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...
  - quickthrowman 2mo ago
    As a comparison, one acre of alfalfa growing year round in California uses about 5*325000=1,625,000 gallons of water a year for four harvests, 4400 gallons of water per day per acre. There’s around a million acres of alfalfa grown in California for a total water usage of 1,625,000*1,000,000=1.625×10¹² gallons (or 5 million acre-feet) per year. 365 million gallons of water per year for one data center is 1000 acre feet of water. California’s alfalfa crop uses as much water as 5,000 of these data centers.
    - quentindemetz 2mo ago
inigyou 2mo ago
This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. It also made solar inverters illegal last week.
- firesteelrain 2mo ago
  > It also made solar inverters illegal last week. That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications. It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1] 1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power-inverters-and-robots-covered-list-0 https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power... > This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. The $1.2B is real, but it wasn’t payment to stop construction. RWE agreed to surrender three offshore wind leases and settle related claims. Anyways, RWE’s three leases were in very early development and weren’t expected online until the 2030s. [2] You can still think both policies are bad. But those are different claims. 2. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/rwe-says-reached-122-bln-deal-cancel-us-offshore-wind-leases-invest-gas-2026-08-06/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/rwe-says-reached-12...
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    It banned all foreign made solar inverters i.e. all solar inverters.
    - firesteelrain 2mo ago
      That’s true. China dominates globally but I found that the US installed European and Japanese models. There is a big supply chain concern and set of reviews happening all across the entire government sector. Energy is a national security concern. [1] 1. https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/solar-photovoltaics-supply-chain-review-report https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/solar-photovoltaics-supp...
      - margalabargala 2mo ago
HSO 2mo ago
[flagged]
fps-hero 2mo ago
Look to Australia if you want to see how these energy policies work out in the long run. Energy is big money. Anything that disrupts the status quo is immediately vilified. It got to the point that our major party at the time lead a “gas fired” green energy policy. They got voted out, the new guys implemented a subsidised home battery policy. In the space of a year it has destroyed the economics of a carbon fuelled grid. All the economics pointing to renewables being the way forward were proven correct. Everyone gets their back scratched. If you’re a consumer and you invested, you have a massively discounted personal power station that generates you money. If you operate the grid, your transmission costs and peak transmission costs went down. General consumer prices went down because of a reduction in peak electricity use driving up retail costs. Everyone in won. Except big gas, who cannot turn a profit on a renewable success story. Don’t let rhetoric become your reality.
- defrost 2mo ago
  > Except big gas, who cannot turn a profit on a renewable success story. If only. Chevron’s Gorgon project will be ongoing for decades and making money hand over fist flogging LNG out of Australia to overseas customers. It'll be a massive source of previously sequestered CO2 and claimed to be "the largest CO2 sequestration project on the planet* .. with the minor catch of (re-) stashing away a very very tiny portion of the CO2 released. Something, something, not let it out in the first place? Still, could be worse, at least they're not planning on fracking the Kimberley. Oh, wait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9IkUUgaww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9IkUUgaww
  - sleight42 2mo ago
    The name is actually "Gorgon"? So a gas company named a project after a legendary monster. I'm not sure how to feel about this. CO2 sequestration sounds good in theory. But...
  - throwaway2037 2mo ago
    > with the minor catch of (re-) stashing away a very very tiny portion of the CO2 released First, I want to clarify that when raw natural gas is extracted from underground wells, some portion of the gas is carbon dioxide. In this project, it is about 15%. The project's sequestration goal was to capture this CO2. So far, they are only able to capture about 1/3 of this CO2 for various technical reasons. I would not characterize 1/3 as a "very very tiny portion". Do I misunderstand your comment? You can read more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_gas_project#Carbon_Dioxide_Sequestration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_gas_project#Carbon_Diox...
wegwerper 2mo ago
A country is but the sum of its people - and this american people have gotten what they voted for. Nice opportunity for the rest of the world, though.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- blooalien 2mo ago
  > ... and this American people have gotten what they voted for. Probably one of the biggest flaws of a Democratic system is that a voting majority can mandate a situation that harms literally everyone against the will of everyone else even when those harms are well documented and absolutely provable. "The majority voted for it" isn't a great answer for the question "Why exactly are we letting the bus driver drive us all over this cliff edge to our fiery deaths?" "Stop the bus! I want off!" "Nope. The vote's done. You're stuck with the result." "Well, what if I voted against driving over the cliff edge?" "Nope. Majority rules. We all die now."
  - defrost 2mo ago
    Bear in mind the US electoral system is far from the best that can done. Not all democracies are equal and the US system is barely "democratic" - it's spiralled in a two party not broadly representative Hotelling's Law swampland.
verandaguy 2mo ago
The environment's already lost. We've passed the 1.5ºC deviation mark from the pre-industrial global average, and we're on track to hit 3ºC in a few more decades. The excess deaths and human misery (both that which is increasingly clearly ongoing, and we have to look forward to) are going to be tragic.
- DennisP 2mo ago
  Yes, but there's still a range of possible outcomes, depending on what we do next.
  - verandaguy 2mo ago
    You'll forgive me for harbouring some pessimism about current world leaders' climate strategy.
    - DennisP 2mo ago
      I didn't say we'd choose wisely. But since there is still a range of possibilities, I'm not giving up on the whole thing.
cosmic_cheese 2mo ago
The sense of urgency is strange and feels extremely forced. There’s no way this is all so important that all other concerns automatically go out the window so projects can complete construction yesterday. It really wouldn’t hurt if the developers involved tried even a little bit to be good neighbors and to select sites where they’re not going to be a nuisance and net negative to adjacent communities at minimum. The blatantly extractive, externalizing mindset of this all reminds me of the attitude that mining companies have taken towards Appalachian states for over a century at this point.
LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
Given local grassroots opposition, the data centers are starting to move into less regulated countries where I would gather building them raises the local standard of living, but presents the new challenge of finding people qualified to run them.
roncesvalles 2mo ago
Exactly, this is all a symptom of underinvestment in grid capacity, and datacenter companies having to cobble together whatever electricity source they could get their hands on at the last minute. It's a complete failure of the state in having any kind of foresight. China, in comparison, has around 2X excess electric production capacity in their grid. That's what made mining Bitcoin, and now ultra-cheap LLM inference, economically viable.
jstummbillig 2mo ago
> Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums. I don't understand what "despite this" is doing here. People have thoughts about what good/bad policy should be, independent of what good/bad policy should do all the time. This is not an argument for or against data centers, but rather against populism. People have too many feeling about too many things, that should simply should not be decided by feel (and, sometimes, not enough about things that should).

vrganj 2mo ago

The entire planet will lose as ecosystems die out, food and water supplies run low, refugee crises and global conflicts ramp up. But hey, line go up!

cyanydeez 2mo ago
Don't worry; republicans are way ahead of that refugee crises by generation fervent far right ethnic nationalism globally, independently of course.
simianwords 2mo ago
[flagged]
- OlivOnTech 2mo ago
  Do you have any source? The global scientific community and more specifically the GIEC have been saying the opposite for years...
  - simianwords 2mo ago
    I have been trying to look for sources myself and I feel like this whole sector is rampant with "noble lies". If you dig into the sources you will find Economic predictions: The most serious mainstream institutions[1] will dress it up us an imminent catastrophe as if humanity itself will collapse if we don't do anything. But once you read the real predictions, you will realise that that it they just say things would be better if you had reduced emissions compared to if we did not, but not compared to today (crucially) Tail risks and irreversible damage: I have read on tail risks, ecological collapse, species death and all of these models are strange and not supported by the mainstream generally. For example [2] article says that 5% of our species will go extinct by 2100 or so. That means more than 200k species! And in the last 50 years fewer than 1500 or so went extinct and it is not some abnormal number. I would encourage you to actually read the studies and see what people believe and the models used. [1] https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/investing-in-climate-for-growth-and-development_16b7cbc7-en/full-report/accelerated-climate-action-can-deliver-strong-economic-benefits_bee34dd7.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/investing-in-climate-fo... [2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adp4461 Edit, can't reply: > Your argument is just linking to credible sources that make the opposite argument as you, and then stating "I disagree" afterwards? Dude, read the first document and then tell me whether they say things will get worse than now or not. They explicitly compare the counterfactual against with or without emissions not against today. This is my issue with this kind of misinformation.
    - estearum 2mo ago
      Your argument is just linking to credible sources that make the opposite argument as you, and then stating "I disagree" afterwards?
    - estearum 2mo ago
      To respond to your edit: The first document is a report on the economic upside of further investment + regulation on climate. It has nothing to do with downside risk of inaction. To the extent it mentions "whether things will get better than now or not," it certainly does not argue things will just be better. > However, current efforts are not keeping pace with rising risks. The world remains on an upwards emissions trajectory, and climate action is losing momentum as countries face a range of competing geopolitical, financial and economic challenges that slow its pace and scale. Without further action climate risks will intensify, and rising disasters, economic instability and financial system vulnerabilities will threaten long-term growth and development. > Actual benefits [of deeper investment + regulation] could be even greater, as uncertain current estimates do not fully account for the economic and social consequences of the increased likelihood of crossing tipping points, such as melting ice sheets or reversing circulation patterns in the ocean. So yes you're reading a publication explicitly written, labeled, and marketed as a positive economic case for deeper investment and regulation, and then saying "see it's just saying things will get better if we invest/regulate, it doesn't talk about downside risk!" But it explicitly says it's not looking at downside risk. Here's the same credible organization in a 2022 report on the downside risks: (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/climate-tipping-points_abc5a69e-en.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/climate-tipping-points_...) > This report reviews evidence that overshooting 1.5°C may push the earth over several tipping points, leading to irreversible and severe changes in the climate system. If triggered, tipping point impacts will rapidly cascade through socio-economic and ecological systems, leading to severe effects on human and natural systems and imposing important challenges for human adaptation > Based on the most recent science and consultations with renowned experts, this report argues that it is no longer appropriate to consider the risk of crossing tipping points as low-probability. Note that inversely, this report does not make a positive argument for the economic growth potential of intervention, because it's a report on downside risk.
- flufluflufluffy 2mo ago
  Both you and the person you replied to are making claims about the future. Neither of them are true.
solenoid0937 2mo ago
This is just pure histrionics, you have no understanding whatsoever of the scale of data center water consumption, electricity consumption, new capacity coming online, etc.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  How much water does a DC use?
  - solenoid0937 2mo ago
    Not much. 0.04% of US water production. For context, that's about 3% of the water consumption of our golf courses, and less than 1% of what we use to water our lawns.
    - loloquwowndueo 2mo ago
      Get off my lawn.
  - quickthrowman 2mo ago
    All US data center water usage is less than the total water used for golf courses or the total water used to grow alfalfa. Less water used in evaporative cooling means more electricity is used for cooling given that the efficiency almost doubles if you add evaporative cooling to a chilled water loop. It’s bad to pump non-renewable fossil aquifer water in Arizona for evaporative cooling, but using cooling towers in an area that gets 30” or more of precipitation per year is probably not going to hurt anything.
  - _DeadFred_ 2mo ago
    The question is does DC building bring added costs to local communities. My small town has a backlog of home builders waiting for permits because of constrained municipal water capacity. We are still paying off the bonds for the last capacity we added. Golf courses/etc are already factored into current costs. Additional new use brings significant cost (bonds to build new capacity), funded by increasing expenses on the entire community, not funded by those who financially benefit from the new build outs. The issue isn't comparative usage to existing hookups, it's new cost burden on the local community where a data center is built. Which is why DC propogandists switched to the golf course measurement, it confuses the original concern, the cost to the community of new DC hookups to municipal water or the very limited amount (of expensive to the community) available hookups that were intended/funded by the community for other purposes.

t0mas88 2mo ago

The overall American economy is going to pay the price in the long term. And current foreign policy is reducing trust in America as a reliable and stable partner, which will make things even worse.

inigyou 2mo ago
Well yeah, it's basically locked in now that in 50 years America won't be a world power any more. It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best.
- petcat 2mo ago
  > It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best. If Canada was a US state it would rank around 4th or 5th in terms of economic size and power. There's a lot of doomerism, but I seriously doubt the US is going to lose its top 4 or 5 economies in the next 50 years. If you want to go really doomer, then I think it's actually more likely that Canada would become a US state instead of the US economy shrinking to the size of Canada. But this is all nonsense talk anyway.
- gruez 2mo ago
  >in 50 years America won't be a world power any more. It'll be in a similar place to Canada at best. What's going to replace it? Rapidly aging China? https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80,format=auto/media-assets/image/20230610_WOC449.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80... https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80,format=auto/media-assets/image/20230610_WOF447.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=80... https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=100,format=auto/content-assets/images/20260808_FBC715.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=600,quality=10...
  - Hnrobert42 2mo ago
    Isn't the US also approaching a peak? https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-POPULATION/AGING/gdpzaomqyvw/ https://www.reuters.com/graphics/USA-POPULATION/AGING/gdpzao... There's so many ways to slice the data, I'm not sure there's an apples-to-apples comparison between US and China. However, it's fair to say both economies face demographic headwinds.

mirekrusin 2mo ago

Modern data centers can be designed with near-zero direct water consumption. It isn’t fundamentally necessary to consume huge amounts of water to cool computers. What’s the story with those new data centers? Do they actually choose to do evaporative cooling that people are complaining about or people are complaining about problem that doesn’t exist?

lokar 2mo ago
How? In most locations for much of the year you need to reject heat either by evaporating water or using electricity (more water) to run a refrigeration cycle.
vineyardmike 2mo ago
It doesn’t matter what the actual reality is. People think that data centers waste water, and they don’t like that. The beef from a single hamburger uses far more water than a year of ChatGPT usage. Few try to reduce consumption in favor of more efficient foods by comparison. It’s about perception.
ByteOfWood 2mo ago
They choose evaporative cooling simply because it's cheaper than a closed loop system for energy use and land area.

Permit 2mo ago

> Despite this, those in power refuse any environmentally aware energy policy nor water policy. Can you tell me how much water a data center uses? If you have strong opinion on the construction of data centers I hope you can answer this basic question about data centers. (Many opposed to them cannot)

estearum 2mo ago
Assuming that it's surprisingly little and without pollution concerns, then an acceptable and enforceable policy should be a very simple request, no?
- Permit 2mo ago
  Yes I agree.
cogman10 2mo ago
Depends on the cooling system, but around 1 to 9L per kwh. [1] A lot, but not all, of these datacenters are using evaporative cooling, which is what kicks their water usage so high. So a 40MW datacenter will consume around 4 million liters of water per day if it is evaporatively cooled. [1] https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275&item_id=130961 https://www.fwpcoa.org/content.aspx?page_id=5&club_id=859275...
- quickthrowman 2mo ago
  As a comparison, one acre of alfalfa growing year round in California uses about 5*325000=1,625,000 gallons of water a year for four harvests, 4400 gallons of water per day per acre. There’s around a million acres of alfalfa grown in California for a total water usage of 1,625,000*1,000,000=1.625×10¹² gallons (or 5 million acre-feet) per year. 365 million gallons of water per year for one data center is 1000 acre feet of water. California’s alfalfa crop uses as much water as 5,000 of these data centers.
  - quentindemetz 2mo ago

inigyou 2mo ago

This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. It also made solar inverters illegal last week.

firesteelrain 2mo ago
> It also made solar inverters illegal last week. That’s overstating it. A couple clarifications. It banned foreign (edit) made equipment because it’s known for cybersecurity issues. It was the FCC that restricted new foreign-made connected inverters over grid cybersecurity concerns. [1] 1. https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power-inverters-and-robots-covered-list-0 https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-adds-foreign-produced-power... > This week, the US government paid a wind farm company $1.2 billion to stop building wind farms. The $1.2B is real, but it wasn’t payment to stop construction. RWE agreed to surrender three offshore wind leases and settle related claims. Anyways, RWE’s three leases were in very early development and weren’t expected online until the 2030s. [2] You can still think both policies are bad. But those are different claims. 2. https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/rwe-says-reached-122-bln-deal-cancel-us-offshore-wind-leases-invest-gas-2026-08-06/ https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/rwe-says-reached-12...
- inigyou 2mo ago
  It banned all foreign made solar inverters i.e. all solar inverters.
  - firesteelrain 2mo ago
    That’s true. China dominates globally but I found that the US installed European and Japanese models. There is a big supply chain concern and set of reviews happening all across the entire government sector. Energy is a national security concern. [1] 1. https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/solar-photovoltaics-supply-chain-review-report https://www.energy.gov/cmei/systems/solar-photovoltaics-supp...
    - margalabargala 2mo ago

HSO 2mo ago

[flagged]

fps-hero 2mo ago

Look to Australia if you want to see how these energy policies work out in the long run. Energy is big money. Anything that disrupts the status quo is immediately vilified. It got to the point that our major party at the time lead a “gas fired” green energy policy. They got voted out, the new guys implemented a subsidised home battery policy. In the space of a year it has destroyed the economics of a carbon fuelled grid. All the economics pointing to renewables being the way forward were proven correct. Everyone gets their back scratched. If you’re a consumer and you invested, you have a massively discounted personal power station that generates you money. If you operate the grid, your transmission costs and peak transmission costs went down. General consumer prices went down because of a reduction in peak electricity use driving up retail costs. Everyone in won. Except big gas, who cannot turn a profit on a renewable success story. Don’t let rhetoric become your reality.

defrost 2mo ago
> Except big gas, who cannot turn a profit on a renewable success story. If only. Chevron’s Gorgon project will be ongoing for decades and making money hand over fist flogging LNG out of Australia to overseas customers. It'll be a massive source of previously sequestered CO2 and claimed to be "the largest CO2 sequestration project on the planet* .. with the minor catch of (re-) stashing away a very very tiny portion of the CO2 released. Something, something, not let it out in the first place? Still, could be worse, at least they're not planning on fracking the Kimberley. Oh, wait: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9IkUUgaww https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rh9IkUUgaww
- sleight42 2mo ago
  The name is actually "Gorgon"? So a gas company named a project after a legendary monster. I'm not sure how to feel about this. CO2 sequestration sounds good in theory. But...
- throwaway2037 2mo ago
  > with the minor catch of (re-) stashing away a very very tiny portion of the CO2 released First, I want to clarify that when raw natural gas is extracted from underground wells, some portion of the gas is carbon dioxide. In this project, it is about 15%. The project's sequestration goal was to capture this CO2. So far, they are only able to capture about 1/3 of this CO2 for various technical reasons. I would not characterize 1/3 as a "very very tiny portion". Do I misunderstand your comment? You can read more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_gas_project#Carbon_Dioxide_Sequestration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_gas_project#Carbon_Diox...

wegwerper 2mo ago

A country is but the sum of its people - and this american people have gotten what they voted for. Nice opportunity for the rest of the world, though.

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
blooalien 2mo ago
> ... and this American people have gotten what they voted for. Probably one of the biggest flaws of a Democratic system is that a voting majority can mandate a situation that harms literally everyone against the will of everyone else even when those harms are well documented and absolutely provable. "The majority voted for it" isn't a great answer for the question "Why exactly are we letting the bus driver drive us all over this cliff edge to our fiery deaths?" "Stop the bus! I want off!" "Nope. The vote's done. You're stuck with the result." "Well, what if I voted against driving over the cliff edge?" "Nope. Majority rules. We all die now."
- defrost 2mo ago
  Bear in mind the US electoral system is far from the best that can done. Not all democracies are equal and the US system is barely "democratic" - it's spiralled in a two party not broadly representative Hotelling's Law swampland.

verandaguy 2mo ago

The environment's already lost. We've passed the 1.5ºC deviation mark from the pre-industrial global average, and we're on track to hit 3ºC in a few more decades. The excess deaths and human misery (both that which is increasingly clearly ongoing, and we have to look forward to) are going to be tragic.

DennisP 2mo ago
Yes, but there's still a range of possible outcomes, depending on what we do next.
- verandaguy 2mo ago
  You'll forgive me for harbouring some pessimism about current world leaders' climate strategy.
  - DennisP 2mo ago
    I didn't say we'd choose wisely. But since there is still a range of possibilities, I'm not giving up on the whole thing.

cosmic_cheese 2mo ago

The sense of urgency is strange and feels extremely forced. There’s no way this is all so important that all other concerns automatically go out the window so projects can complete construction yesterday. It really wouldn’t hurt if the developers involved tried even a little bit to be good neighbors and to select sites where they’re not going to be a nuisance and net negative to adjacent communities at minimum. The blatantly extractive, externalizing mindset of this all reminds me of the attitude that mining companies have taken towards Appalachian states for over a century at this point.

LogicFailsMe 2mo ago

Given local grassroots opposition, the data centers are starting to move into less regulated countries where I would gather building them raises the local standard of living, but presents the new challenge of finding people qualified to run them.

roncesvalles 2mo ago

Exactly, this is all a symptom of underinvestment in grid capacity, and datacenter companies having to cobble together whatever electricity source they could get their hands on at the last minute. It's a complete failure of the state in having any kind of foresight. China, in comparison, has around 2X excess electric production capacity in their grid. That's what made mining Bitcoin, and now ultra-cheap LLM inference, economically viable.

jstummbillig 2mo ago

> Those in power seem to think that a compute advantage is necessary to maintain economic advantage. Despite this, the voters universally hate data centers, so much so that both NY and TX have data center construction moratoriums. I don't understand what "despite this" is doing here. People have thoughts about what good/bad policy should be, independent of what good/bad policy should do all the time. This is not an argument for or against data centers, but rather against populism. People have too many feeling about too many things, that should simply should not be decided by feel (and, sometimes, not enough about things that should).