• yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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    18 days ago

    Typically? Maybe in some arid climates without humidity but try using evaporative cooling during a thunderstorm and you’ll find your data center shutting down from overheating.

    70% A large part of water usage in industrial nations comes from electricity generation. That’s where data centers consume most of their water.

    Edit: 70% is only true for Canada, globally agriculture consumes more. The US for example has ~40% each for agriculture and power generation.

    • wols@lemmy.zip
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      18 days ago

      Could you elaborate on the 70% figure? A quick search returns multiple hits suggesting the 70% number is actually related to agriculture, not electricity production. See e.g. here.

      Or did you mean 70% of the water used be data centers?

      • yetAnotherUser@discuss.tchncs.de
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        18 days ago

        Oh, you’re right. I used the Wikipedia article as source and it said:

        Distribution of this use among sectors was: thermoelectric power generation 66.2%, manufacturing 13.6%, residential 9.0%, agriculture 4.7%, commercial and institutional 2.7%, water treatment and distribution systems 2.3%, mining 1.1%, and oil and gas extraction 0.5%.

        Yet the previous sentence said this was about Canada. Whoops.

        Though in Europe and North America, where a big chunk of data centers are typically built, agriculture tends to have a lower share with industry (including but not limited to power generation) having a bigger one:

        https://ourworldindata.org/water-use-stress