A growing body of research attempts to put a number on energy use and AI—even as the companies behind the most popular models keep their carbon emissions a secret.
It’s so annoying when you try to discuss this because often a gaggle of idiots come out and point, superficially, that water gets recycled into nature. They always ignore the cost of making that water fit for human usage.
I’m not very well read on this so I could very well be off-base, but couldn’t you leverage the heat as a means to desalinate saltwater instead of using freshwater and letting it evaporate into the atmosphere?
While desalination does need a lot of energy it’s dealing with the waste brine that’s the bigger problem when actually planning one. You can’t just dump it back into the ocean without killing a huge swathe of marine life.
I read somewhere recently that AI data center open loop water cooling systems drain 100 million liters of freshwater a day and evaporate it away.
Would you mind sharing where you read that?
This isn’t the article I read but it has tons of info about this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/
It’s so annoying when you try to discuss this because often a gaggle of idiots come out and point, superficially, that water gets recycled into nature. They always ignore the cost of making that water fit for human usage.
I’m not very well read on this so I could very well be off-base, but couldn’t you leverage the heat as a means to desalinate saltwater instead of using freshwater and letting it evaporate into the atmosphere?
I don’t think it’s hot enough for that.
While desalination does need a lot of energy it’s dealing with the waste brine that’s the bigger problem when actually planning one. You can’t just dump it back into the ocean without killing a huge swathe of marine life.