On-Prem

Google datacenters use 'a quarter of all water' in one US city

Thirsty officials drained of arguments after media outlet legal battle to free the information


Google has disclosed how much water its datacenters consume, following a legal battle between a local media outlet and the city of The Dalles in Oregon, which sought to keep the information confidential.

The figures show that the search giant consumed 274.5 million gallons (about 1.2 billion liters) of water during 2021 at its facilities in The Dalles alone. This is dwarfed by the 845.8 million gallons (3.8 billion liters) consumed by Google datacenter infrastructure at Council Bluffs in Iowa.

Overall, Google's consumption of water across the US during 2021 accounted for 3.3 billion gallons (12.4 billion liters), with “additional global locations” (ie, the rest of the world) representing an extra 971 million gallons (4.4 billion liters).

This may sound like a lot (and it is), but to put it in perspective, Google claims that the total annual water consumption of its datacenter operations is comparable to the water footprint of 29 golf courses in the southwest US.

Oregon city courting Google data centers fights to keep their water usage secret

READ MORE

These figures also refer to potable water, and do not include other sources such as seawater, Google said.

The case was touted as a major test of Oregon public records law by media outlet The Oregonian, which requested the information from Google last year, as The Register reported. It has been involved for the past 13 months in a legal case with the city of The Dalles, which argued on behalf of the search giant that the details should be considered a trade secret.

However, city officials decided to drop the case and provide past water use data for Google and agreed to provide annual water usage in future years.

According to The Oregonian, water use by the search giant at the facilities in The Dalles has nearly tripled in the past five years, and it claims that Google’s datacenters now consume more than a quarter of all the water used in the city.

This situation is unlikely to improve in the near future, since the company has already submitted plans for a further two datacenters to be located at The Dalles.

However, this does highlight the increasing concern around the world over the environmental impact of the massive bit barns operated by companies like Google.

A recent report from the Uptime Institute pointed out that datacenter operators are aware of this and aiming to up their efforts in anticipation of reporting on sustainability metrics becoming mandatory in some jurisdictions over the next five years. Currently, only about half report their water usage or datacenter carbon dioxide emissions, it said.

In the UK, Thames Water, which serves parts of London and the Thames Valley, announced earlier this year that it has begun efforts to try and quantify how much water is being used by datacenters within its area of coverage, and said it wanted to work with operators to reduce their overall water usage.

Google is also a signatory to the Climate Neutral Datacenter Pact (CNDCP), an initiative involving datacenter operators and trade bodies as part of the European Green Deal. In July, the signatories presented the European Commission with proposals for minimizing the volume of water used in their datacenters. However, they also have until 2040 to achieve compliance with the new metrics it proposes. ®

Send us news
37 Comments

Google shows cloud customers it's happy to have an open relationship

You can play the field and Chocolate Factory won't throw your stuff out

Google wants to target you – yes, YOU – with AI-generated ads

Next step, AI-generated advertisers with AI-generated products for AI-generated people

Privacy Sandbox, Google's answer to third-party cookies, promised within months

Winter in July for some of those in the web ad world

The FBI as advanced persistent threat – and what to do about it

Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you

Google settles location tracking lawsuit for only $39.9M

Also, more OEM Android malware, Google's bug reports (mostly) ditch CVEs, and this week's critical vulns

Search the web at least once every two years or risk losing your Google account

Updated inactivity policy may nix accounts, and data. Even Workspaces data and your precious pics

AMD scours parts bin for old CPUs, GPUs to put in Chromebooks

Do you really need the latest and greatest cores to doomscroll the web?

Social media may harm kids. US Surgeon General says so

That's a warning and not permission, in case you were wondering

SCOTUS rules Google and Twitter didn't contribute to terrorist attacks

And holds off on Section 230 for another time

Google Go language goes with opt-in telemetry

Go go gadget data collection

Google sued over 'interception' of abortion data on Planned Parenthood website

Plaintiff claims they didn't consent to analytics tracking

What you need to know from today's Google IO: PaLM 2, Pixel Fold, AI everywhere

We sat through the Chocolate Factory's PR blitz so you don't have to