5.6 billion gallons and counting: Google’s dipping its toes in too much water – Times of India

“How we’re driving positive environmental outcomes throughout our business in three key ways: developing products and technology that empower individuals on their journey to a more sustainable life, working together with partners and organisations everywhere to transition to resilient, low-carbon systems, and operating our business more sustainably,” said Google about its 2023 Environmental Sustainability report. Apart from outlining the above, here was a staggering statistic mentioned in the report. 5.6 billion gallons. That’s the amount of water consumed by Google’s massive data centres and offices. “In 2022, total water consumption at our data centres and offices was 5.6 billion gallons — the equivalent of what it takes to irrigate 37 golf courses annually, on average, in the southwestern United States,” the report noted.

Google said that it does make a conscious effort to use water responsibly. “When used responsibly, water cooling can play an important role in reducing emissions. We’ve found that our water-cooled data centres use about 10% less energy and emit roughly 10% less carbon emissions than our air-cooled data centres.”
According to a report by Business Insider, compared to 2021, Google’s water consumption has gone up. In 2021, Google consumed 4.3 billion gallons of water. In 2022, that number has gone up by 20%. Experts believe that this number is set to go up as Google presses hard the AI button. Training AI models like Bard and others require incredible amounts of water. In the last six months, Google has stepped up its AI pursuits. Water is required to cool the data centres and AI will push that capacity even further.

In its report, Google acknowledged the need for consumption of billions of gallons of water. However, the company has set the target to replenish 120% of freshwater across its offices and data centres. Currently, the company replenishes merely 6% of the water.