Data Centers and Water Use: Myth vs. Reality
Texas is addressing the rapid, unregulated growth of data centers due to concerns over their impact on state resources, particularly water and electricity. Governor Greg Abbott has enacted a freeze on new data center projects to allow state regulators to assess resource consumption, following a UT study that projected a significant increase in future water demand.
Texas is grappling with the rapid and largely unregulated expansion of data center developments, prompting significant concerns from community members and elected officials regarding the strain on the state's vital resources, especially water. This escalating worry has led to direct governmental intervention.
Governor Greg Abbott has formally frozen all new data center projects across Texas. This moratorium is intended to provide state regulators with time to thoroughly evaluate the actual water and electricity consumption of these facilities. The decision follows a University of Texas study's warning that data center water usage, currently less than half a percent of the state's total, could surge to 9% by 2040. Furthermore, state regulators encountered widespread non-compliance, with most companies failing to respond to legally mandated surveys on their water usage.
The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT Austin, home to the nation's largest academic supercomputer, was cited as an example of advanced cooling techniques. While its servers utilize non-conductive fluid submersion or direct liquid cooling across chips, the system still relies on a closed-loop water system to cool these liquids. TACC reported maintaining the same million gallons of water in its closed-loop system since 2012, highlighting that while some methods are efficient, water remains a component in many operations.