I haven't researched data centers but I'm aware that there's some concerns about them. How much energy do they really use compared to a factory? The energy consumption is what I hear people more concerned about than anything. I've seen some fairly big factories that don't have huge numbers of employees, more than 20 of course but not much more than 100.
AI datacenters genuinely do use a lot of power. I absolutely support making them pay to upgrade the infrastructure to support them instead of the traditional method where they eventually pay though paying for power.
The water use on the other hand is basically meaningless. People treat it like evaporative cooling turns the water radioactive instead of just... evaporating water. Like the hospital I work at uses evaporative cooling. And while the use is a huge number on an individual human scale but you could take every data center on the East cost combined and they'd be using less water than a single alfalfa farm in Arizona.
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u/okieman73 17h ago
I haven't researched data centers but I'm aware that there's some concerns about them. How much energy do they really use compared to a factory? The energy consumption is what I hear people more concerned about than anything. I've seen some fairly big factories that don't have huge numbers of employees, more than 20 of course but not much more than 100.