"Mexico’s datacentre industry is booming – but are more drought and blackouts the price communities must pay?", 25 September 2024

...

Datacentres are clustering in the state of Querétaro, where Amazon, Microsoft and Google are among those lining up multibillion-dollar investments. Amazon alone has said it will invest $5bn. The government heralds the industry as a new driver of economic growth – but in a drought-prone state where the electrical grid suffered blackouts this summer, critics want to know how strained infrastructure will find the extra water and energy it needs.

Similar debates are playing out across Latin America, where datacentres are springing up to meet the needs of an expanding digital world.

A datacentre is, in essence, a warehouse filled with computers working around the clock. The servers require vast amounts of electricity, and some combination of air and water to keep them cool.

Querétaro was already a hub for datacentres in Mexico, but this year Amazon, Google and Microsoft announced or launched their own installations there.

...

From the industry’s perspective, Querétaro offers safety and seismic stability close to Mexico City. Del Prete denies that the state government has provided public land or fiscal incentives to attract datacentre providers.

But what datacentres need most is reliable access to two essential elements: electricity and water. And water, in particular, is a tense issue in Querétaro.

...

...the city has kept growing, more industries have arrived – and the climate has changed. The drought this year was the worst this century.

Local people say the state government reneged on a promise to supply their communities with piped water after it received their permission to build Aqueduct II. When they went to occupy the dam in protest, they were removed by security forces who arrested some of them, including Ortiz.

...

Now Querétaro’s booming datacentre sector is opening a new front in this debate. In the absence of public data, it is hard to accurately estimate a datacentre’s water needs, which depend on factors such as its MW of installed capacity or the cooling technology it uses. On average, a 1MW datacentre with a typical water-based cooling system may use about 25m litres of water a year.

According to this estimate, 600MW of new datacentres in Querétaro would imply 15bn litres of water a year, representing roughly 13% of the water use of the metropolitan area. However, if the datacentre employs a closed-loop system, this water may be reused, rather than being emitted as steam or ejected back into the water system.

...

Amazon, Google and Microsoft declined to answer specific questions about the electricity and water needs of their planned datacentres in Querétaro, instead referring to company-wide plans to reduce their energy and water use.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for an interview or comment.

A Google spokesperson alleged that its “Google Cloud region” in Querétaro supports the company’s broader goal of operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy in every grid where it operates and aligning with its global goal of 100% renewable energy consumption. The company has not commented on water consumption.

Google also said its investments in Querétaro are expected to contribute $11.2bn to the country’s GDP and create over 117,000 jobs by 2030.

Amazon said: “At AWS, we know that water is a precious resource. We are committed to being water-positive by 2030 by returning more water to communities than we use in our data centre operations.” The company argued that, before building its infrastructure, it looked closely at the local climate conditions and water resources. “In Querétaro, we carefully analysed regional and local water availability before selecting an air-cooled datacentre design that will not require continuous use of cooling water in operations.”

Independent experts say it is technically possible for a datacentre to reuse the same water to cool the server continually. Still, more electricity is required to cool the water between uses, raising energy needs. Air-cooling systems are also more energy-intensive.

The problem is that 77% of Mexico’s electricity comes from burning fossil fuels in thermal power stations, which involves turning water into steam to move turbines.

“So there will be water consumption, and then obviously the carbon emissions associated with it,” says David Mytton, who researches sustainable computing at the University of Oxford. “They will inherit the carbon intensity of the local grid.”

According to Otto Van Geet, an engineer at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the public scrutiny of datacentres has incentivised companies to focus on reducing on-site water use, even if it means increasing overall water use when you include off-site electricity generation.

In a hot, dry place such as Querétaro, he suggests the ideal solution would be to use its abundant solar resources, and for datacentres to use closed-loop cooling systems that require less water but more electricity.

In Europe, new regulations will soon require datacentres to report their electricity and water consumption. But in Mexico, there is little public debate about the costs and benefits of hosting datacentres. “We don’t know the numbers involved,” says Herrera.

Del Prete says it would be good to see similar regulations in Mexico, not just for transparency but for sustainability, too. “It’s important to be clear how much is being consumed to be able to improve – that is, reduce consumption.”