The Water Puzzle
As data centres grow, so does their impact on the environment, in respect to carbon emissions, water usage and land development. But water is not an easily replaceable commodity at many sites. In others it is rationed and controlled in order that domestic and other critical social infrastructure are not adversely impacted. This leaves data centre builders and operators in a bind, as pressures grow on them to lower the environmental impact of new projects.
Water has always been central to the operation of data centres as it has a crucial role in maintaining the temperature of critical IT facilities, in order that equipment contained within them continues to operate optimally. Constraints stemming from climate change or location have wrought the problem of water into a puzzle, a challenge to be overcome. And so, the industry has risen to it by offering waterless cooling solutions. This step-change is also propelled by client demand.
In 2019, the UK’s Department of Environment, Farming and Agriculture (DEFRA) asked IT infrastructure business leaders to tightly monitor and significantly reduce their operations’ impact on the environment, and that included water use. We are not far off the moment in which we will begin to see waterless data centres being created at scale, and conceivably, even a retrofitting programme to bring older facilities up-to-date.
The real driver is the dawning reality that climate change is here, and that we have to speed up our response to it and make the necessary adaptations simultaneously cost-effective. Sustainability, therefore, involves a tense balancing act in which if the environment loses, we all lose. The message has been taken to heart in the business and engineering world, and now leading IT innovators are securing funding and pouring resources into waterless systems or ones that greatly reduce water use. This is because water is on course to become an increasingly scarce resource within the next decade, according to the UN and leading climate science.
Many companies, among them CyrusOne, are speeding ahead, taking their corporate responsibility seriously and planning waterless data centres. The USA, their primary location of their operations, is getting drier year on year - droughts are now far more common and longer-lasting, and challenges are regularly raised by municipalities against industries over their water usage. Presently almost all data centres draw millions of gallons of water from sources also relied upon by local populations. But there is another piece of the puzzle that is of concern, and that is waste water. This is because traditional cooling systems expel water that must be specially treated, which can be a major issue for local municipal water management systems. Therefore, many firms are thinking about closed-loop water cooling systems, air-cooled chiller technology with integrated compressors, rejecting evaporative cooling or blowdown.
A technology that is simpler, less wasteful and which requires less maintenance will soon be arriving, such as the direct-on-chip, waterless, two-phase liquid cooled rack system being developed by Equinix. It is an encouraging sign, and it is up to each of us, either as operators, clients, supporting industries or partners, to reduce water usage but also begin harnessing renewable power that enables any new engineering solutions which use water more responsibly to flourish. Not forgetting also that there is a strong business case for waterless cooling, as municipalities would give the go-ahead more readily if they were assured that a greater water burden would not be placed on them. So, potentially the construction of such data centres would be faster, making savings all round, not least in the capital expenditure involved in the building of that extra water infrastructure of traditional data centres.
In short, there is no business without water conservation. It is now a business imperative and highly important to clients and communities near project sites. We at Technivo have been ahead of the curve - we have highly water efficient equipment, we are conscious of our water waste and have trained our staff accordingly, something we are always happy to discuss with clients.
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