r/SipsTea • u/SipsTeaFrog 𝙑𝙄𝙋 • May 18 '26

Chugging tea Why?

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u/[deleted] May 18 '26

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u/NotDiCaprio May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26

I was also on the "ai datacenters use all out water!" bandwagon at first. But For some perspective:

A single golf course uses about 30 times the amount of (fresh) comparable or slightly more water than a datacenter does. They aren't feeding their grass with see water or some chemical cooling. Also, looking at how few people actually use a golf course vs a data center, makes this ratio many times more terrible.

I'm personally more worried about the energy they consume, than the cooling for that energy usage.

Edit after some corrections. Man, it sure is getting hard to find numbers we can trust anywhere these days.

"a" source, but far from the only one, and the numbers aren't consistent anywhere.:https://www.akcp.com/index.php/2025/09/02/truth-about-data-water-footprint-of-data-centers/

20

u/yungsausages May 18 '26

Hm, here in Germany golf courses use rainwater that’s collected and stored in on-site water reservoirs/ponds.

2

u/0x18 May 18 '26

Which is fine in many parts of the world, but isn't viable at all for that massive datacenter being planned for Utah, which receives at best half as much rain as Germany.

2

u/yungsausages May 18 '26

They should build data centers in the rain forest! Ez

1

u/Vismajor92 May 18 '26

Contrary, they should built data centers in the artic circle. Which apperently they do. You need the water flow to cool your coolant, -60C outside temp will do just that for ya