According to the state's Peak Water Utility, data centers can represent a quarter of Sydney's current annual drinking water supply within 10 years.
Currently, the data centre uses approximately 3.5 billion litres of Sydney's drinking water supply per year. This is less than 1% of total demand.
Sydney Water, Australia's largest water utility, is preparing to jump to 25% by 2035.
For context, Sydney's desalination plant supplies 15% of drinking water, or 91.25 gigalitres, each year.
Sydney Water says data centres can use 25% of the city's annual drinking water supply by 2035. (Supply: Sydney Desalination Plant))
As Australia is looking to establish itself as a global data center hub, industry and government are investing in new ways to separate these buildings from their drinking water supply.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is driving a surge in new data centers, buildings that house computer servers that store, process and distribute data.
AI can help solve some of the world's biggest environmental challenges, but it also brings itself.
Data centers become critical infrastructure, supporting everything from daily internet use and online services to health services and national security.
The advent of generator AI (also known as GEN AI) has driven further demand for large data centers with extremely high computational and energy demand.
The majority of these critical systems are temperature control to ensure they continue to run. Make sure the server doesn't overheat.
Temperature control is a major challenge for supercomputers and data centers. (ABC News: West Matteeussen))
This makes the data center a beast of a power center, which may require a significant amount of electricity and beverage (drinkable) water, depending on the system.
Data centers historically use water to displace heat from servers via cooling towers or chiller systems, which can result in large amounts of water being lost due to evaporation.
Australia currently hosts over 260 data centers, about a third of which are located in Sydney.
According to Sydney Water, all 89 people there are currently being pulled out of public drinking water, but this cannot last forever.
High quality H2O
Many data centers are already investing in more water-efficient cooling systems, including closed loops, immersion and liquid cooling to the chip.
Some companies, like CDC, have used fully recycled water systems over the years.
The company was founded in Canberra in 2007 during the Millennium drought, one of the longest recorded droughts in Australia's history, beginning in the late 1990s.
This resulted in a closed-loop cooling system designed to save up to 5 billion liters of water each year, as the company had to come up with a technology that required little operational water consumption for primary cooling.
One of the CDC data centers. (CDC Data Center ))
However, not all data centers behave this way, so we had to come up with a solution that would not affect Sydney's water.
James Harrington, senior project manager for Sydney Water, said one of the main solutions is wastewater.
Speaking from the Quakers Hill wastewater treatment and purification facility, Harrington explained that data centers need high-quality water to cool the system, and can be achieved through wastewater treatment technology.
James Harrington is Sydney Water's Senior Project Manager. (ABC News: Emily Jane Smith ))
“As data centers become more common, we need to make sure that cooling requires a lot of water and that is possible,” he said.
“Therefore, preparations to remove drinking water supplies and provide other sources of water will ensure that there is adequate drinking water sources for the population.“
Sydney Water CEO Paul Plowman said the expected increase in water demand from Sydney data centres is based on projected growth.
“These numbers correspond to the expected amount of data centers and the processing power they have, which is more processing power because the chips get hotter and there's more cooling required,” Plowman said.
He said Sydney residents should be convinced that there are plans to ensure that drinking water supply does not affect the growth of the data centre.
“It's really important to understand that there are many ways people can provide water, and drinking water isn't necessarily the answer.”
Instead of providing the high quality water needed for data centres, Sydney Water is looking at wastewater treatment technologies. (ABC News: Emily Jane Smith ))
Location, location, location
These issues fall into the mind of Wayne Rylands, CEO of Sydney's Ride Council, which will adopt the Macquarie Park innovation district.
“We already have around 11 data centers that are under construction, under construction or are scheduled to come here,” Ryland told 7.30.
“But there's nothing to stop it [becoming] 20 or 30 or 40.
“We are not prepared for significant use of water, significant use of power, significant loss of vegetation in some very large locations.”
Wayne Rylands is CEO of Ryde Council in Sydney. (ABC News: Shawn Kingma))
According to Sydney Water, data centers in Macquarie Park can use up to 30 megalitres per day within a decade. This accounts for around 2% of the city's current daily drinking water demand.
“We're not against data centers,” Ryland said.
“About the location of the data center.“
But Plowman said building centres in metropolitan areas near large sewerage systems could be key to avoiding the use of drinking water supplies.
“McCauley Park isn't too far from the Northern Outing Sewer System, so whether or not 2% of that is actually drawn from the drinking water system is something we work with a variety of supporters,” he said.
Daniel Francis of Australia's Water Services Association says the country has a unique opportunity to become a resource-efficient global data center hub.
Australia has emerged as a potential global data center hub. (ABC News: Daniel Mercer))
“The growth of data centers will create unique opportunities that will help us increase our national economy and productivity, but will create extra demand for valuable water resources,” she said.
“Nationwide, we work with the data center sector to understand the rapid evolution of technology and how to sustainably incorporate it into our customer mix and future demand planning.”
Environmental Issues and Solutions
As an individual, it is difficult to know how much water and energy we consume every time we use our generator AI tools.
Last week, Google released a research report that was equivalent to a television with a median prompt in Google Gemini text using about five drops of water and energy of around nine seconds.
These figures differ significantly from the 2023 US research paper, and estimated that CHATGPT-3 could drink up to 500 ml of water with a medium length response of about 10-50, when considering both the freshwater required for both server cooling and power generation.
Professor Jon Whittle, an AI expert at CSIRO, welcomed Google's research as a step towards increasing transparency in the industry, but said it should be remembered that personal use doesn't represent the big picture.
Jon Whittle says there is a need for more transparency, focusing on the environmental footprint of AI. (ABC News: Craig Hansen))
“When you look at the environmental impact of AI, you need to see the full life cycle,” he said.
“It's not just you use it [generative] AI prompts at home. It also involves training AI models, which requires a lot of energy.
“With the potential to be up to 25 football pitches, we are building data centers that can have a major impact on the environment.
“And there's (…) e-waste too.”
AI has environmental challenges, but it also holds many solutions.
This dichotomy is fully displayed inside the walls of Perth's Porcy Supercomputing Research Center.
Here, the most powerful research supercomputer in the Southern Hemisphere called Setonix is used for important environmental studies, including cutting-edge climate change predictions.
Setonix is a joint research venture between the government, universities and CSIRO. (ABC News: West Matteeussen))
Buildings face the same temperature control issues as data centers, but rare geothermal methods can be used to cool the system through underground aquifers, saving over 7 million liters per year.
According to executive director Markstickels, the geothermal cooling system is rare because it relies on site-specific conditions, such as a suitable aquifer, stable groundwater flow and designs that can handle the sustained thermal loads of supercomputers.
“Most data centers choose more standardized, replicable cooling methods, as geothermal requires higher positive investment, complex integration, and long-term environmental management,” he said.
“This makes Pawsey's systems both a rare and valuable demonstration of sustainable innovation in advanced computing.“
Despite being ranked as one of the “greenest” systems of this kind, Setonix requires around 1.5 megawatts of power.
“It's relatively in the small suburbs or large shopping centres,” said executive director Mark Stiddels.
Mark Stickells is CEO of the Pawsey Supercomputing Research Center. (ABC News: West Matteeussen))
“But this [supercomputer] It is just a small portion of the size of the systems that are training current AI models.
“So, every time you get a phone to do something really cool with AI, I think you need to provide it to provide it, the infrastructure, the power, the water, the services you need, the services you need.”
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