It’s astronomical. The amount of water used by Google to cool its servers is colossal. Amounting to 15 billion liters for the year 2022, the water consumption of the American company represents the water used each year by the inhabitants of a city like Montpellier or Strasbourg.
Every action performed on the Internet has consequences for our planet. If we hear more and more about digital pollution, this is often difficult to calculate concretely. Today, as Google released the amount of water needed to run its servers, there is some very concrete data that allows us to simply understand the magnitude of thee-pollution. Each search on the internet, each video or song streamed, each photo stored or even each email sent represents a quantity of energy and water consumed.
In 2022, for example, the Google data center located in Iowa in the United States alone used more than three billion liters of water to cool its servers. Necessary to cool these “super-computers” which store all the data present on the web, water is essential for the American firm. In Oklahoma, 2.5 billion liters are used each year to cool machines. A sum, again astronomical, while the drought threatens more and more inhabitants on our planet.
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An astronomical record for Google but more controlled than for most other technology companies
If the figures are exorbitant, it is clear that on average, Google manages to consume less water than its competitors to cool its servers. With an average of 1.1 liters per kilowatt hour in energy use, the search engine ranks far ahead of most other American industries which consume, on average, 1.8 liters of water per kilowatt hour.
In addition, Google also wants to amplify its transition to cleaner consumption. The American firm plans to operate by 2030 ” 24/7 carbon-free energy states the published environmental report. As a reminder, the carbon footprint caused by sendinga photo by email would be equivalent to a journey of 50 meters by car.
Source : newscientist.com
