It could happen. Sometime in the future. Data centres use an incredible amount of electricity and water. Towns that incentivise these data centres to locate nearby for jobs and tax benefits might find themselves dealing with unrealistic demands for power and water – to the point where a data centre could sue the town to continue providing them with water even if it means the people living in the town get cut off.
For more details of just how much power and water data centres use, listen to Paris Marx’s 4 part mini-series on the Tech Won’t Save Us Podcast.
TRANSCRIPT
It could happen. The small town of Bloubergstrand, outside of Cape Town in South Africa, has just been sued by one of the world’s largest data centres so that the data centre can take all of its water. This leaves the citizens with no water, and the only option is to leave the town or fight back, I suppose.
This is ThrowForward Thursday, my name is Graeme Codrington. Every week, We jump into the future and we see what’s going on there and if it has anything to tell us today.
And today, I want to talk about the way in which data centres use an incredible amount of energy and water. Massive data centres are being built all around the world, and they need serious resources. One of the biggest resources is water, mainly used for cooling of these massive sets of computers and hard drives and processing power. They also need a lot of power, and in fact, Amazon and a number of other big data centres have already indicated that they probably plan to build their own nuclear power stations near some of their biggest data centres just to keep up with the energy supply.
But there are a lot of towns and cities around the who give these data centres contracts, who give them incentives to come and put the data centre near their town. There’s a little bit of an employment bump that can go with it. Obviously, there are taxes and local services that can be charged out to the data centres.
But these data centres may sign contracts with these towns and cities to ensure that they are given preferential access to power and water in particular. And what would happen then if there was a water shortage?
Cape Town is one of the cities in the world that has come closest to actually running out of water. A number of years ago, there was a countdown to what they were calling day zero. They got within a week or two before the rains came. Other cities, like Mexico City and a few cities in India, have come very close as well.
But what happens if there is a water shortage, but the data centre continues to demand the supply that it has contracted with the local city council? And in order to keep up with that and to make sure that they are not sued out of existence by one of the big global Behemoth data centres, they basically switch off the water to all of the residents. It could happen, and it would obviously be a disaster for the people who live there.
I’m going to put a link in the show notes to a podcast series that was done about data centres of vampires and what they are doing to local communities even now, but the likelihood that it will be even worse in the future.
This is the dark side, the downside of the technology boom that we’ve got in the shift into the cloud, that the amount of power being used by these data centres and the cloud processing systems is absolutely not in line with our desperate need to reduce carbon emissions and to protect our climate. And then you add the water consumption, where typically these data centres are using drinking water rather than saltwater from the oceans.
We need to be thinking about the implications of the technology boom that we’ve got. And yes, as much as we all like technology, and yes, as much as we all like to create AI-generated images, we need to be thinking a little bit more carefully about the impact of the processing power, especially power and water, on the AI and the computers that we use, and certainly not handing over our power to the data centre companies around the world. They should not be able to exist in a vacuum outside of the societies that they serve.
I wonder, as you think like a futurist, what unintended consequences your industry might have for the planet, for people, and for communities around the world. Those people and those communities are not going to stand idly by while we strip them of their living, of their lifestyles, of who they want to be as people, and they’re going to fight back, I’m sure. We need to make sure that we are not the ones they are fighting against.
Thanks, as always, for joining me in the ThrowForward Thursday studio. A cautionary note today, but if our team at TomorrowToday can help you and your team think about the future, think about the forces shaping the world around us, and think about the opportunities that this might bring for your business to establish itself as a force for good, please make sure you contact us, we’d be happy to help you do that. Otherwise, I’ll see you again next week in the future.
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Graeme Codrington, is an internationally recognised futurist, specialising in the future of work. He helps organisations understand the forces that will shape our lives in the next ten years, and how we can respond in order to confidently stay ahead of change. Chat to us about booking Graeme to help you Re-Imagine and upgrade your thinking to identify the emerging opportunities in your industry.
For the past two decades, Graeme has worked with some of the world’s most recognised brands, travelling to over 80 countries in total, and speaking to around 100,000 people every year. He is the author of 5 best-selling books, and on faculty at 5 top global business schools.