Scottish data centres powering AI already using enough water to fill 27 million bottles a year

by Synthia_of_Kaztropol

23 comments

  1. Not a lot of water used at the moment, but the idea of using perfectly drinkable water in an open cycle to provide cooling just rubs me the wrong way.

  2. We should be building out data centres for coming AI economy. Using wind and tidal energy and the abundance of water we have. This will be as important as oil and Scotland can be at the forefront.

  3. We dont want it. That cheap machine learning pish doesnt hold a candle to our glorious water. Even if it was being done properly and not cheap machne learning, build the worlds most powerful AGI and turn it on, one of the first things it will complain about is that we used the good Scottish water to make it.

  4. Fucking AI, coming over here stealing our jobs and our tap water

    BBC Panorama did a documentary on cloud data centres a few years ago (Is the cloud damaging the planet?)

    IIRC, it showed that in Ireland, during periods of drought or low water levels, priority was given to the data centres over citizens

    Shocking stuff really and not something we should be encouraging here, considering it’s environmental impact and how climate change is already affecting us

  5. Yeah but how many Olympic sized swimming pools is that? It’s the only liquid metric we understand

  6. If you want to see real water wastage, look up the carnist industrial complex.

  7. Scotland must surely be one of the world’s best locations for data centres.

    > ample and excess power of a renewable source, particularly in the west

    > excess consistent rainfall, particularly in the west

    > excellent universities and higher education

    If our government had a coherent AI strategy, it would be introducing localised energy pricing in key areas to compel investment.

    The average freshwater flow into the Tay is 200m3/s

    A cubic meter is 1,000l so it takes 2 minutes and 15 seconds of water entering the Tay to fill those 27m bottles of water.

    A dripping tap wastes 5,500l per year. That’s one dripping tap per 1,100 people in Scotland equivalent to run those data centres.

    As the article points out – that’s 0.005% of the water supply. It’s a total nothing story.

    Edit: their own anecdote is even better – equivalent to drinking 2.5l extra per year. That’s what a dripping tap does in FOUR hours.

  8. Could they not just say 13.5 million litres equal to 0.005% of the water supply.

  9. turn it all off, AI is killing the internet, Integrity, honesty, intelligence, critical thinking in people of all ages. And when the AI bubble bursts, those DataCenters will want bailouts.

    Just turn them off.

  10. So in the USA they are also facing high demand on water usage for data centres and LLM’s. They are now conducting cloud seeding and weather manipulation to make it rain in these areas to support the water usage. It’s crazy the chemicals it leaves over in the atmosphere and on the earth.

  11. They are very careful in this article to not say these are specifically AI data centers, though I know for a fact at least some of them are or will be. But they certainly wrote it in a way that leads you believe they are all AI. It’s all well and good to complain about AI centres, but everything we do online is via data centers.

    Open loop systems often return water to the source (e.g. Torness cooling system) so there’s no net loss of water, but it can shift the water from one location to the other. Evaporative losses (like with the big Simpsons nuclear plant) remove water so there is a direct loss. Once again the article is not clear about how exactly these systems are cooling or what’s actually happening with the water.

  12. So not much water (Scotland has a looooot) right now. My curiosity is more about the projected water and energy usage in ten years time. Heck in five years.

    If I learned anything from seeing the data centers in the USA is their demands are almost exponential. First there’s only 1 center, then 3, then 15…

  14. How big are the bottles we’re talking about……

  16. Wasn’t this one of contributing reasons as to why they decided to put one underwater in Orkney.

  17. Should be forced desalinate their own water and generate their own power. There’s no excuse in this day and age.

  19. With the refinery shitting in the central belt, that’s still a net saving. Chill out.

  20. They use as much energy as a small city… thank god we have so much surplus renewable energy and we all benefit from cheap bills as a result.

    Or we could have been a G7 country with ppl living below the poverty scared to hear their homes in winter.

    Thank god we have some of the highest reserves of natural gas in Europe….

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