Billions of Google searches and billions of YouTube streaming hours each day translate into billions of litres of water needed for cooling Google’s data centres. But like other major tech companies, Google had been secretive about those water consumption figures for individual data centres – until the company significantly shifted its stance late last year.
For the first time, Google is revealing how much water gets used at each US data centre site annually. The total in 2021 came to almost 13 billion litres – about the water footprint of 22 golf courses in the south-western US.
“They’re the first cloud provider – and probably the first major data centre operator – to provide such detailed figures,” says , who has been a sustainability consultant for the Uptime Institute, an organisation based in New York that advises data centres. “Having previously considered water consumption almost like a state secret, Google has completely changed its stance on water transparency.”
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The annual water usage was highest at Google’s data centre site in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with more than 3 billion litres consumed, followed by Mayes County, Oklahoma, with 2.5 billion litres consumed. Google also plans to share more about water consumption at data centres elsewhere around the world starting in the company’s 2023 Environmental Report.
Google had previously viewed site-specific water usage data as a trade secret because of concerns that it could indicate the amount of computing power available at each data centre site, says Ben Townsend, Google’s global head of infrastructure and water strategy.
“However, as we have diversified our portfolio in terms of locations and cooling technologies, site-level water consumption is less tightly linked to compute capacity,” says Townsend.
The company’s previous secrecy even led to a between The Oregonian newspaper and the city of The Dalles in Oregon, when city officials refused to disclose how much water Google’s local data centres were using. When the numbers were finally revealed, The Oregonian reported that amounted to more than a quarter of all water used in the city.
“Water consumption is not really a question of getting to zero, it’s about how much is too much,” says Mytton. “That differs by region, so we’d need more context for each location.”
By using Google’s site-specific numbers to calculate how much water each facility uses for cooling and other needs, at Villanova University in Pennsylvania found that Google’s data centres had a water usage effectiveness of about 1.1 litres per kilowatt hour of energy usage. That beats the US industry average of about 1.8 litres per kilowatt hour.
But data centres don’t just use water directly for cooling their rooms filled with computer servers – they also consume water indirectly through power plants using steam turbines to generate the electricity that they require.
Here, Wemhoff found that Google’s data centres also do better than average when accounting for water consumption impact on water availability in the areas supplying their electricity and water. The only Google sites that didn’t beat the industry average had the highest water consumption totals – Council Bluffs in Iowa and Mayes County in Oklahoma.
But just beating the industry average may not be enough for environmental sustainability, says Wemhoff. Many data centre sites in the western US in particular are affected by a megadrought and climate change. “The industry as a whole needs to do a better job in reducing water consumption,” says Wemhoff.
