European Union warnings that datacenters urgently need to curb their water consumption have prompted the Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe (CISPE) trade association to argue a new approach to infrastructure investment.
The warnings arrived in early June with the publication by the European Commission of a set of policy proposals designed to improve the often-inconsistent way that water is managed, or mismanaged, across the bloc.
At a time when drought has become routine across parts of Europe, the EU Water Resilience Strategy identified a range of problems, principally that too much water is being lost in leaks or rendered unusable by pollution.
However, it also singled out datacenters, currently undergoing hypergrowth on the back of technologies such as AI, as a particular consumption concern. The EU is reportedly now drafting minimum standards for datacenter water efficiency to be published by the end of 2026.
Water can be used by data centers in two ways: in a closed loop, as a means of carrying heat away from computing components to a heat exchanger where the water is cooled and recirculated, or in an open loop, where the water is allowed to evaporate, leaving the system and taking heat away with it.
The industry is responding: Microsoft is working on designs for zero-water-consumption datacenters to support its cloud services.
CISPE’s response to the European Commission’s report warns that the resulting regulatory uncertainty could hurt the region’s economy.
“Imposing new, standalone water regulations could increase costs, create regulatory fragmentation, and deter investment. This risks shifting infrastructure outside the EU, undermining both sustainability and sovereignty goals,” CISPE said in its latest policy recommendation, Advancing water resilience through digital innovation and responsible stewardship. “Such regulatory uncertainty could also reduce Europe’s attractiveness for climate-neutral infrastructure investment at a time when other regions offer clear and stable frameworks for green data growth,” it added.
CISPE’s recommendations are a mix of regulatory harmonization, increased investment, and technological improvement. Currently, water reuse regulation is directed towards agriculture. Updated regulation across the bloc would encourage more efficient use of water in industrial settings such as datacenters, the asosciation said.
At the same time, countries struggling with limited public sector budgets are not investing enough in water infrastructure. This could only be addressed by tapping new investment by encouraging formal public-private partnerships (PPPs), it suggested: “Such a framework would enable the development of sustainable financing models that harness private sector innovation and capital, while ensuring robust public oversight and accountability.”
Nevertheless, better water management would also require real-time data gathered through networks of IoT sensors coupled to AI analytics and prediction systems. To that end, cloud datacenters were less a drain on water resources than part of the answer:
“A cloud-based approach would allow water utilities and industrial users to centralize data collection, automate operational processes, and leverage machine learning algorithms for improved decision-making,” argued CISPE.
Not a drop to drink
Getting a handle on datacenter water usage can be difficult. A lot depends on the type and size of a facility, its workloads, and location. What’s not in doubt is that it is growing. In February, a report from the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering pointed out that the UK’s policy of promoting the country as an AI center would put huge strain on water supplies.
“Rapidly growing demand could have far-reaching effects, such as competition for renewable energy or drinking water sources. Both Google and Microsoft have reported year-on-year increases in data center water consumption since 2020 and many of these water withdrawals come from sources of drinking water,” it noted.
Simple regulation alone might not be enough – Government urgently needed to monitor the way datacenters were using water too, it argued.
The datacenter sector is working on its own efficiency standards, with the industry’s Climate Neutral Data Centre Pact already committed to “achieving a Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) of 0.4 liters/kWh for new data centers in water-stressed areas by 2025,” CISPE noted.
According to Rodolfo Rosini, co-founder and CEO of startup Vaire Computing, solving the water problem requires addressing both excessive power demand and the difficulty of building new infrastructure.
“The larger problem in many developing countries and in the EU is building infrastructure and getting planning permission. This tends to be a much bigger problem than actual resource consumption,” said Rosini.
“Generally speaking, the issue in Europe is not so much water scarcity but rather the energy bottleneck.” Today’s computing systems need to be cooled because of their excessive heat output.
AI has made everyone notice this fact. However, the fact that countries such as the UK had barely added any reservoir capacity for more than three decades is still a concern.
“With access to local compute projected to be one of the most important drivers for economic growth in the next 15 years, states should look into expanding water access and availability soon,” said Rosini.
Source:: Network World