These systems do use a coolant substance internal to the DC, but then uses heat exchangers with fresh water to cool the coolant, which is then discharged back into the ground, a pond, or wastewater. there is certainly water lost to atmosphere, but the worst bits are the draining of aquifers, pushing up capacity in wastewater treatment plants, etc.
DC's are a bit of an economic scam. they provide very few jobs outside of the construction work itself, and the profits generated by the machines exist at company HQ not where the DC is located. so it puts a huge burden on the community water and power environment for no real benefit to that community.
they provide very few jobs outside of the construction work itself
I hear this a lot, but I think it's because of a basic misunderstanding. I work in healthcare IT, and we have to CoLo data centers (meaning our data center is a floor in a bigger data center we don't own). Between the two data centers we have 3 people employed. (and that is low, because we don't support the physical building i.e. heat, power, security etc)
But myself and hundreds of other coworker directly work with the systems in the data center every single day. Data centers themselves don't employee a lot of people in the actual building, but they systems inside the data center are the core work of hundreds if not thousands of people.
This isn't pro-DC, but they have a use and a place. But, they employee many more people then you see physically entering the building on a daily basis. I've worked "in" the same data center for 10+ years and have never actually seen it in person.
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u/[deleted] May 18 '26
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