Data centers and servers are incredibly water-intensive. Companies increasingly rely on them to perform complex tasks such as artificial intelligence computations. As a result, the demand for water to cool and operate these facilities has grown in recent years. This challenges the environmental targets set by the same companies for 2030 and 2050.
In addition to their high water usage, data centers consume a massive amount of energy. Companies like Google and Meta are exploring nuclear energy options to meet their energy needs. In the quest for sustainable solutions, Microsoft believes it’s discovered a promising approach: a closed-loop system that enables water to circulate without any wastage.
Plenty of water. This significant water consumption is essential for maintaining current services and supporting the expected growth of data centers. Heat poses a serious threat to processors. Additionally, while liquid cooling can be implemented on a small scale for home devices, it’s being scaled up dramatically in data centers. Companies are considering approaches like submerging servers in large tanks and even placing them at the bottom of the ocean.
However, the water demand can be so high that it’s led to project blockages. For instance, Google faced obstacles when trying to establish a data center in Chile due to the excessive water requirements. It amounted to 7.6 million liters of drinking water per day.
A new generation of data center cooling systems. Microsoft is a major player in the tech industry and has been working for years to improve the cooling of its servers. In 2021, the company tested a seemingly unconventional approach at one of its Azure data centers in Washington. They submerged servers in tanks filled with liquid that was boiling at a constant temperature.
The new cooling solution appears to be more sustainable and involves a redesign of server facilities. In a recent statement, Microsoft announced that in August 2024, it developed a new design for its data centers aimed at optimizing water consumption for the servers that support AI operations. This design employs liquid cooling based on a closed-loop system. This means that once the system is filled during construction, water will continuously circulate between the servers to dissipate heat without needing an additional supply.
Microsoft’s design.
Reducing water usage. Currently, each Microsoft data center requires about 125 million liters of water per year, an excessive amount that the new design aims to reduce. In recent years, Microsoft has made significant progress, improving water usage from 0.49 L/kWh in 2021 to 0.30 L/kWh in the last fiscal year. This is an improvement of 39%. The goal is to minimize water consumption further and eliminate the need for freshwater supplies once the servers are operational.
2026. Microsoft’s initiative won’t see immediate results. The company has indicated that the current fleet of servers still employs a mix of liquid cooling and water dissipation systems. However, the new zero-water consumption designs will begin testing in projects located in Phoenix, Arizona, Wisconsin, and Mount Pleasant. If the outcomes are favorable, Microsoft plans to implement these systems on a larger scale, with results expected by 2027.
Collaborative efforts. Microsoft isn’t alone in these efforts. For instance, Lenovo has also been researching and designing ways to reduce water and energy consumption in data center cooling. During a visit to their research and design center in North Carolina last year, we learned that their servers contribute to a circular economy. They do so by using excess hot water for heating buildings, supplying hot water, and even for swimming pools, among other uses.
Tech companies will clearly need to adopt new solutions if they want to meet their environmental goals, especially as the demand for servers continues to grow for various tasks beyond just AI calculations.
Image | imgix | Microsoft
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