Andy Park: Every time you send an email or ask a chat GPT a question, it’s processed through servers in a data centre. And the more that AI becomes part of daily life, the more data centres will need. But it comes at a hidden cost because these centres in fact consume an enormous amount of water. So much so that experts are now warning plans for a raft of new data centres in Melbourne may have the potential to threaten the city’s water supply as Leanne Wong reports.
Leanne Wong: Whether it’s sharing a file over email or using an AI tool like chat GPT, every little action that needs to be processed and stored. And that’s where data centres come in.
Ascelin Gordon: Data centres are basically big industrial areas that house large numbers of computers, usually mounted in racks, often referred to as servers.
Leanne Wong: Ascelin Gordon is a senior lecturer in sustainability and planning at RMIT University.
Ascelin Gordon: The last few years, this sudden explosion in popularity of AI has actually resulted in another huge expansion in the requirements for data centres. And that’s basically because these AI models popularized by generative AI models such as chat GPT require huge amounts of computational resources to both train these models and then to deploy them in a way where people can interact with them.
Leanne Wong: But these vast warehouses filled with servers come with a major environmental cost, particularly in the large amounts of water used to cool the equipment. New data shows the potential impact that high demand for data centres could have on Melbourne’s water supply. Greater Western Water, which services Melbourne’s western suburbs, has received 19 applications from data centres, with the requests totalling 19.7 gigalitres a year, enough to supply 330,000 residents with drinking water. Tim Fletcher is a professor of urban ecohydrology at the University of Melbourne.
Tim Fletcher: Let’s round it to 20 gigalitres a year. So we’re sitting at something like 4% of Melbourne’s total water use, which is a substantial jump in water use.
Leanne Wong: The Victorian government has been keen to welcome the lucrative investment of companies like Microsoft and Amazon. A spokesperson told the ABC that it’s supporting data centres while balancing the state’s water and energy resources. But experts like Tim Fletcher say data centres are one of a number of demand pressures that risk Victoria’s long-term water supply.
Tim Fletcher: Because our population will grow, I would say the number of these data centres will grow, industry will grow, and also we’re getting declining yields from our water supply catchments.
Leanne Wong: Tim Fletcher says now is the time to plan for sustainable ways to boost water supply, including investing in stormwater harvesting and recycling water.
Tim Fletcher: I think we really are at a crossroads in thinking about the future of our water resources in Melbourne.
Leanne Wong: And it’s not just Melbourne. Professor Stuart Kahn is head of civil engineering at the University of Sydney and specialises in water engineering. He says it’s a problem governments around the country are grappling with.
Stuart Khan: We don’t necessarily need to be worried about the water use itself. It’s more about if we don’t plan for it, if we don’t see it coming and the water utilities don’t see it coming and they don’t build the infrastructure to be able to reliably supply that water, then we will have trouble.
Leanne Wong: There are currently more than 200 data centres around Australia. That number is expected to continue surging in coming years.
Andy Park: Leanne Wong there.
