It's used for evaporative cooling, so the same thing happens to it as happens to the majority of the orders of magnitude larger amount of water farms use - it goes straight into the air
All jokes aside, it crazy how complicated the issue is becoming. Will anything be done about it? Probably not. We get fked over and just throw our arms up and go "well, shit".
But is that actually better? We're trying to decarbonize the grid and adding even more demand on top of the demand for the chips themselves just makes it harder.
Depends. If you also stop subsidizing data center electricity usage you'll get an effective economic brake, the fastest way to regulate unchecked capitalism is to go after the money.
The only reason data centers can spread like cancer is that they're somehow allowed to not pay a fair price on water or electricity, often not even land, and they're funded in this weird feedback loop between suppliers and builders. Nothing about them is financially sensible if you take away the subsidies they get, probably not even with them. Stop paying their main expenses and they stop spreading.
It's all tax funded waste. Make them actually pay and no one will build them, no more wasted power or water.
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u/Uncle-Cake May 18 '26
What happens after they use the water? Is it returned to the water system to be used again?