Google Constructs New Low-Water Data Centre in Texas

Jakarta (ANTARA) – Google is building a new data centre in the state of Texas, United States, employing advanced air-cooling technology to reduce water usage.

As reported by Engadget on Wednesday, Google stated that by utilising advanced air-cooling technology, water usage will be focused solely on essential operations within the data centre, such as in the kitchen area.

This construction is part of Google’s commitment to invest 40 billion US dollars, equivalent to 672 trillion rupiah, in Texas over two years, as previously announced.

The technology company also stated that it has added approximately 7,800 megawatts of clean energy production and capacity with several utility providers to be added to the Texas power grid.

Several parties believe that the presence of the data centre could potentially increase electricity bills for residents, worsen global greenhouse gas emissions, and consume a very large amount of freshwater.

On the other hand, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman previously stated that concerns about the water usage of data centres are unfounded.

He also argued that training one artificial intelligence model requires a lot of energy, but training a human also requires a significant amount of energy.

Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk suggested building data centres in space as a solution to reduce the environmental impact on Earth. However, several experts believe that this idea could potentially create new and equally significant environmental risks.