Data Centers produce a lot of pollution because they use a lot of energy and consume a lot of water to stay cool. If we want to keep using YouTube, Netflix, Duolinguo etc., we need to require these Data Centers to make some changes. Reducing the environmental impact of Data Centers will require improvements to both power generation and cooling. Cooling accounts for most of Data Center water consumption, and electricity generation, the pollution.

A Plan:

Reduce Air Pollution:

Require power from renewable sources (Solar, Wind, Geothermal, hydroelectric etc.)

Or

Require electricity generation using “Green” Hydrogen fuel cells which emit only water vapor and no CO2, Nox, sulfur, or particulates. The Hydrogen production, down stream from the Data Center does require energy and should use renewable to achieve the goal of net zero.

Reduce Water Usage: A large Data Center may consume millions of gallons of water per day for cooling.

Some ideas:

Update the system to use air cooling, close the loop and recycle, and/or cool the servers directly (rather than the entire building)

Use reclaimed waste water

Capture the heat: Instead of venting as exhaust: Examples: the University of Virginia is integrating a campus data center with geothermal and energy plant infrastructure to reuse heat. Proposals at the Monarch Cloud Campus in West Virginia aim to co-locate 1,000 MW of hyperscale data centers with agricultural greenhouses, supplying waste heat for year-round food production.

We need to face reality that Data Centers
are here and are multiplying.
Eight Billion of us are making a mess.
If we could only get Congress’s attention!