Amazon is tackling power and water use, one of the biggest problems with data centres, as it invests about $13.2bn on its Australian cloud infrastructure in the next three years across the eastern seaboard, says a report in the Australian Business Review.
Although the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence has upped the demand for data centres that house the same computing firepower needed to mine bitcoin, the report points out that AI is yet to attract the same level of environmental scrutiny.
According to the report, Google uses 16.2 billion litres of water a year to cool its data centre fleet, which amounts a standard Olympic-size 50m swimming pool holds 2.5 million litres.
The Australian Business Review says that although Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary AWS does not disclose how much water its data centres use, it says it will “return” more water to communities than it consumes by 2030.
It says it will do this by partnering with non-profit organisations to increase access to water and making its own cooling systems more efficient, as it expands its data centre “regions” in Sydney and Melbourne.
In Australia, it says, this will involve returning about 32 million litres of water each year to the catchment area that supplies Sydney via a partnership with the Greater Eastern Ranges conservation group.
The two-year project would involve restoring the local environment in the Wollondilly Shire on the outer southwest fringe of Sydney to increase water quality and yield, which includes removing weeds that sprang up after the Black Summer bushfires swept through the area four years ago, Jenna Leiner, Asia-Pacific sustainability lead for AWS, told The Australian Business Review.
Great Eastern Ranges chief executive Gary Howling said the program would also support local communities and wildlife, including threatened species such as the glossy black cockatoo, grey-headed flying fox, koala and platypus.
According to the report, energy and water availability have increasingly become a hurdle for data centre development. This, it says, makes it critical for Amazon and other tech giants to accelerate green projects.
Singapore’s data centre expansion was temporarily suspended as it did not have enough capacity to power both the data centres, industry and homes, but according to the report, was lifted in July.
Businesses have criticised state governments for setting their own 2035 emissions reduction targets ahead of the commonwealth, arguing the haphazard approach will increase the risk of the electricity grid failing. Meanwhile, the report points out that the Albanese government expects AI to inject up to $600bn into the national economy by the end of the year.
But it says companies like Amazon are increasingly taking the lead over government. AWS has two data centre regions in Australia, in Sydney and Melbourne, and is investing $13.2bn in its Australian cloud infrastructure from 2023 to 2027.
The report cites Amazon has also completed similar programs overseas, such as one with The Rivers Trust in Britain to build two wetlands on a tributary of the Thames to improve the quality of one of London’s main water supplies.
In addition to making data centres greener, a holistic approach is also needed, and according to Leiner, this started with the designs of the chips in its computers to make them more energy-efficient.
Amazon also uses evaporative cooling which involves drawing hot air from outside, passing it through a filter and wet cooling pad to circulate cool air throughout the building.
This has made Amazon’s data centres more water-efficient, using less than one cup of water (190ml) to cool one kilowatt hour of IT load, compared with the industry average of about 1.8 litres for the same load, Leiner told the Australian Business Review.
