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The Secret Cost of Google's Data Centers: Billions of Gallons of Water to Cool

Servers

I

BY NIKITHA SATTIRAJU / BLOOMBERG

APRIL 2, 2020 1:29 AM EDT

n August 2019, the Arizona

Municipal Water Users

Association built a 16-foot pyramid

of jugs in its main entrance in

Google Vice President Majd Bakar speaks on-stage during the annual

Game Developers Conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco,

California on March 19, 2019. Josh Edelson–AFP/Getty Images

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Phoenix. The goal was to show

residents of this desert region how

much water they each use a day—

120 gallons—and to encourage

conservation.

“We must continue to do our part

every day,” executive director

Warren Tenney wrote in a blog

post. “Some of us are still high-end

water users who could look for

more ways to use water a bit more

wisely.”

A few weeks earlier in nearby Mesa,

Google proposed a plan for a giant

data center among the cacti and

tumbleweeds. The town is a

founding member of the Arizona

Municipal Water Users Association,

but water conservation took a back

seat in the deal it struck with the

largest U.S. internet company.

Google is guaranteed 1 million

gallons a day to cool the data

center, and up to 4 million gallons

a day if it hits project milestones. If

that was a pyramid of water jugs, it

would tower thousands of feet into

Arizona’s cloudless sky.

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Alphabet’s Google is building more

data centers across the U.S. to

power online searches, web

advertising and cloud services. The

company has boasted for years that

these huge computer-filled

warehouses are energy efficient

and environmentally friendly. But

there’s a cost that the company

tries to keep secret. These facilities

use billions of gallons of water,

sometimes in dry areas that are

struggling to conserve this limited

public resource.

“Data centers are expanding,

they’re going everywhere. They

need to be built in a way that

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ensures they are not taking critical

resources away from water-scarce

communities,” said Gary Cook,

global climate campaigns director

at Stand.earth, an environmental

advocacy group.

Google considers its water use a

proprietary trade secret and bars

even public officials from

disclosing the company’s

consumption. But information has

leaked out, sometimes through

legal battles with local utilities and

conservation groups. In 2019 alone,

Google requested, or was granted,

more than 2.3 billion gallons of

water for data centers in three

different states, according to public

records posted online and legal

filings.

Clashes over the company’s water

use may increase as it chases

Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft

Corp. in the booming cloud-

computing market. Google has 21

data center locations currently.

After pumping $13 billion into

offices and data centers in 2019, it

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plans to spend another $10 billion

across the U.S. this year.

“The race for data centers to keep

up with it all is pretty frantic,” said

Kevin Kent, chief executive officer

of consulting firm Critical Facilities

Efficiency Solutions. “They can’t

always make the most

environmentally best choices.”

Google often puts data centers

close to large population hubs to

help its web services respond

quickly. Sometimes that means

building in hot and dry regions.

The processing units inside heat up

easily and water is needed to cool

them down.

“We strive to build sustainability

into everything we do,” said Gary

Demasi, senior director of energy

and location operations at Google.

“We’re proud that our data centers

are some of the most efficient in

the world, and we have worked to

reduce their environmental impact

even as demand for our products

has dramatically risen.”

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In Red Oak, Texas, a town about 20

miles south of Dallas, Google wants

as much as 1.46 billion gallons of

water a year for a new data center

by 2021, according to a legal filing.

Ellis County, which includes Red

Oak and roughly 20 other towns,

will need almost 15 billion gallons

this year for everything from

irrigation to residential use, data

from the Texas Water Development

Board show.

Many parts of Texas are already

seeing high water demand,

according to Venki Uddameri,

director of the water resources

center at Texas Tech University.

“With climate change, we are

expected to have more prolonged

droughts,” he said. “These kinds of

water-intensive operations add to

the local stress.”

Water-scarce cities have to make

trade-offs between conservation

and economic development, and

cash-rich Google is a big draw. “It’s

a constant battle in Texas because

of wanting both,” said Uddameri.

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In August, Google filed a petition

with the Public Utility Commission

of Texas to strip a local utility in

Red Oak, Rockett Special Utility

District, of its federal right to be

the sole water supplier to the

property. Google said it filed the

petition after Rockett confirmed it

doesn’t have the capacity to meet

the company’s demands. If

approved, the petition would let

Google get water from another

provider.

Rockett contested this in a legal

response and said Google provided

little information on how the water

will be used, both in its application

to the utility and in “vague”

conversations involving company

representatives. Despite that,

Google made “incessant” requests

for the utility to assess if it can

meet the company’s water needs,

Rockett said in legal filings. Google

paid Rockett to do a report on

whether the utility could provide

enough water for the project. That

report has not been submitted and

the internet company has been

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pressing the utility to complete it,

according to Google.

Rockett brought a case against

Texas’ public utility commissioners

for refusing to dismiss Google’s

petition despite being aware of the

utility’s rights. A Google entity,

Alamo Mission LLC, is named as a

defendant in the case. Lawyers for

Rockett declined to comment on

the ongoing case. Google says it’s

not the only one looking for an

alternative to Rockett. Another

development in Red Oak is also

seeking an alternate water supply,

according to the company.

The planned data center in Red Oak

would be Google’s second in Texas.

It struck a deal with the city in July

2019. Red Oak officials told

residents about Google’s plans

ahead of time, according to Todd

Fuller, the city manager. There

wasn’t much concern about the

impact the data center could have

on local resources including water,

according to Fuller. “Our water

system is pretty robust,” he said,

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adding that the city doesn’t use its

full water capacity.

Red Oak isn’t so laid back about

water use on its website, though.

On a page dedicated to water

conservation, the city says it gets

half its water supply from Dallas

and encourages residents to reduce

water use because Dallas’ six

reservoirs are 18% depleted.

Mandatory water restrictions will

kick in if those sources become 35%

depleted. Fuller did not respond to

requests for comment on the

matter.

Google said it doesn’t use all the

water it requests, but the company

must make sure enough is available

for periods of high demand, or

when the weather’s particularly

hot. That’s necessary to keep

internet services reliable, according

to the company.

Google’s data center water use

became a subject of controversy

last year in Berkeley County, South

Carolina. An environmental group

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opposed the company’s request for

1.5 million gallons of groundwater

a day from what it said was a

“historically threatened” source.

The company has also worked with

Berkeley County Water &

Sanitation to get 5 million gallons

a day from the Charleston Water

system. Google said its share of this

supply is far less than 5 million

gallons a day, with the rest

available for the broader

community.

Google has been trying to secure

the 1.5 million gallons—triple the

daily amount it’s currently allowed

in Berkeley County—since 2016.

The Coastal Conservation League

took issue with Google’s refusal to

share information on how it will be

using the extra water. Despite the

opposition, the South Carolina

Department of Health and

Environmental Control granted

Google’s request, triggering a

backlash from some residents.

The conservation league called out

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the DHEC for giving Google so

much water while asking a local

public utility, Mount Pleasant

Waterworks, to reduce its

withdrawal from the aquifer by 57%

over the next four years. The utility

exceeded its previous peak use

demand by 25% in May 2019, one of

the driest months last year in

Berkeley County, according to Clay

Duffie, general manager of Mount

Pleasant Waterworks.

“It’s unfair that the DHEC is asking

us to reduce our water withdrawal

while someone like Google can

come in and ask for three times

more than their original permit and

get it,” Duffie said.

Google eventually backed off its

groundwater request and reached

an agreement with the league to

only use it as a last resort. The deal

still lets the company withdraw

groundwater if there’s a shortfall,

when conducting maintenance, or

when demand exceeds available

potable or storm water supplies

during peak user activity.

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The Arizona town of Mesa, where

Google plans a 750,000 square-foot

data center, gets half its water from

the drought-prone Colorado River.

A contingency plan was signed into

law last year requiring states

dependent on the river to take

voluntary conservation measures.

Still, Mesa officials say they remain

confident about future supply while

continuing to remind residents to

limit their water consumption. “We

do not have any immediate

concerns,” said Kathy Macdonald, a

water resources planning adviser

with the city. In 2019, Mesa used 28

billion gallons of water, according

to Macdonald. City officials expect

that to reach 60 billion gallons a

year by 2040, a demand Mesa is

capable of meeting, she said.

Big companies like Google wouldn’t

locate to the city if it couldn’t meet

their water demands, Macdonald

said. Mesa passed an ordinance in

2019 to ensure sustainable water

use by large operations and fine

them if they exceed their

allowance.

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Google has toiled for years to

reduce the carbon footprint of data

centers. Today, the facilities churn

out a lot more computer power for

every watt of energy used. In its

2019 environmental report, the

company argued that reducing its

energy use also makes it more

water-efficient. “Generating

electricity requires water, so the

less energy we use to power our

data centers, the less water we use

as well,” it said.

However, data center experts say

there’s usually a trade-off between

water and energy use. “If the water

consumption goes down, energy

consumption goes up and vice

versa,” said Otto Van Geet, a

principal engineer at the National

Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Google relies on “evaporative

cooling,” which evaporates water to

cool the air around the processing

units stacked inside data centers,

according to its environmental

report. The most common systems,

known as computer room air

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conditioners, are energy intensive.

Evaporative cooling uses less

energy, but the process requires

more water. Operators will often

embrace the thirstier approach

because it’s less expensive, said

Cook from Stand.earth.

“Water’s cheap. In many places, the

energy costs are much higher” he

added.

In a data center application the

company filed in Henderson,

Nevada, in 2018, Google’s

considerations included utility and

real estate costs, tax incentives and

availability of qualified workers.

Google has paid more attention to

water use in recent years. It relies

on recycled water or seawater

where it can to avoid using

drinking water or draining local

supplies. Google also says it saves

water by recirculating it through

cooling systems multiple times. In

Mesa, the company is working with

authorities on a water credits

program, but said it’s too early to

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share more details.

From 2007 to 2012, Google used

regular drinking water to cool its

data center in Douglas County, just

outside Atlanta. After realizing the

water “didn’t need to be clean

enough to drink,” the company

shifted to recycled water to help

conserve the nearby Chattahoochee

River. It’s difficult to use similar

approaches for other data center

locations because the required

technology isn’t always available,

according to the company.

“The Chattahoochee provides

drinking water, public greenspace

and recreational activities for

millions of people,” the company

said in a blog post at the time.

“We’re glad to do our part in

creating an environmentally

sustainable economy along the

shores of the Hooch.”

–With assistance from Mark

Bergen.

CONTACT US AT [email protected].

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