Will AI cause a water crisis?

 

Illustration: AI-generated infographic based on the author's article, "Will AI Cause a Water Crisis?"

AI has dominated conversations in recent years, causing equal amounts of hope and fear amongst its supporters and detractors, respectively, owing to its ability to massively enhance productivity, even while it threatens to make human employees redundant. What has perhaps gone unnoticed is that AI may be contributing to a water crisis in a world already reeling from an environmental crisis brought about by more than a century of rapacious, largely unhindered exploitation of the earth’s scarce natural resources. Is AI going to add another disappointing chapter to this sordid saga?

​Water Guzzling Data Centres are the Problem

It is data centres that make AI tick, but in the process consume a lot of water to cool down the servers that help in carrying out tasks ranging from summarising a document to creating an image. What that does to a country like India, where 342 million people out of a population of 1.4 billion people don’t have access to safe water, is something that needs to be seriously looked at. Water-hungry data centre infrastructure is expected to annually consume enough water to satisfy the water needs of 1.3 billion people at the end of the decade. In India, it is projected that data centres’ annual water consumption could cater to Mumbai’s water needs for a whole week. Apart from the above, the fact that the electricity generated for running a data centre also requires water adds to the problem.

​That being stated, data centres are not the only business or industrial activity that consumes a lot of water. There have been quite a few heavy industries in the past that required the use of a lot of water. The steel, textile, chemical and paper & pulp industries are cases in point in this regard. But the problem with data centres, specifically is that these are often located in areas where water resources are already very strained. The situation gets exacerbated by global warming, which can further negatively impact the availability of water.

​Can you have data centres and yet avert a water crisis?

Given that no country, including the most populous one in the world like India, can afford to lag behind with regard to AI adoption, one has to look at managing the negative fallout of such a policy with regard to pressure on scarce water resources. For instance, data centres could look at rainwater harvesting or treated wastewater for their cooling needs. They could also look at using seawater for cooling the servers, something which gives coastal cities like Visakhapatnam an advantage. No wonder that Reliance Industries  has decided to set up a 1.5 GW data centre there.

​Improved cooling technologies like air cooling and liquid cooling, as well closed loop systems, can also help reduce the consumption of water for cooling data centre servers. Besides, the use of more efficient newer chips that require less energy and cooling than in the past helps mitigate the situation as well.

​Data centre growth- planning is the key

Data centre growth may be inevitable in an era that is already defined by AI, but allowing that to happen in an unplanned, haphazard and random manner can prove disastrous for water security across nations at a time when climate change is already negatively impacting water availability across the globe. Ensuring that data centres don’t come up in regions facing water scarcity and choosing optimal infrastructure design is of the essence here. The implementation of efficient water management practices can help ensure that the growth of data centres provides an impetus to the growth of AI in countries around the world, rather than lead to debilitating water crises.

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Can data centres fuel the new Indian IT boom?

Photo by panumas nikhomkhai: https://www.pexels.com/photo/close-up-photo-of-mining-rig-1148820/

According to leading management consultancy firm Deloitte, India is slated to corner a big chunk of the data centre growth and expansion happening in the APAC region, which is expected to garner an investment of $800 billion by 2030.Viewed against the challenges faced by the Indian IT sector on account of  emergent AI technologies threatening to wipe out traditional avenues of revenue generation, shifting focus to becoming a data centre power house might yet resuscitate the once mighty Indian technology sector, which has suddenly started looking very fragile indeed.

​India ostensibly has everything that is required to help it make one of the leading data centre hubs in the world. From low infrastructure and manpower costs to active government support, it apparently has things neatly lined up to help it do just that. But given the existing power situation in the country and the excessive reliance on coal-generated electricity, there are many challenges to be overcome in order to get there. These include straining the water resources available in the country, which are already under intense pressure to cater to the needs of nearly a billion and a half people. Land acquisition and the creation of a suitably skilled workforce are other major challenges that need to be addressed.

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Data Centres- The Only Path Ahead for the Indian IT Sector?

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The IT sector is one of the few success stories that the country has seen with regard to providing a well paying career path to millions of Indian youth this century. Apart from the technically qualified who take up jobs in this sector, there is an even larger number of people who find indirect employment working as security staff, drivers, real estate managers and canteen personnel.

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The impending wind-down of the IT sector puts millions of livelihoods at stake, which makes it imperative that the opportunity afforded by the likely emergence of data centres as a major growth area acts as a godsend. Worldwide, the massive growth of cutting edge technologies like AI, 5G, cloud computing, and the IoT has led to an enormous surge in the demand for data storage, thereby making data centres a vitally critical component of the upcoming and emerging technology eco-systems. Besides, data centres are also required to help manage the data as well as processing needs of the high-growth sectors like finance, e-commerce, healthcare, gaming and a host of other industries that rely on dependable digital support in the shape of world class data centres.

​In lieu of this, India is seeking to vastly enhance its data centre capacity in 2026 and the subsequent years leading up to 2030, by which time a large number of big data centre hubs would have become operational. It is heartening to note that an investment commitment of more than a  $100 billion dollars is expected to be achieved by 2027. As a matter of fact, it is raining investments in India, when it comes to major Indian and international business groups' interest in helping grow thedata centre sector. From the home grown Adani group looking at investing $100 billion towards developing hyperscale AI-ready data centres over the next decade to US technology behemoths like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and others deciding to invest as much as 67.5 billon in the Indian data centre space, there does seem to be a momentum towards building data centres up as the next big thing to happen to the Indian IT space.

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Can focusing on data centres move India down the IT value chain?

For all those tom tomming the impending rise of India as a major global data centre hub, there is a contrary school of thought which fears that this could possibly move the Indian industry down the IT value chain. It suggests that rather than be known for low end server farms, India should stride ahead with a focus on creating world class SaaS products, designing chips and building cutting edge new age AI models.

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Conclusion

Despite the misgivings of a few, the overriding consensus is that data centre growth augurs well for the Indian IT industry as it helps lay the foundation for the accelerated growth and adoption of AI and Cloud technologies across the world. Global management consultancy firm KPMG believes India is witnessing a data centre revolution that is helping achieve the trillion dollar digital economy dream of the country.

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They hold that it makes eminent sense for a nation that boasts the largest and  most data intensive mobile user numbers in the world to work on expanding data centre capacity expansion on an unprecedented scale. Besides, the rapid and massive growth and adoption of AI have necessitated that data centre growth in the country be encouraged in every possible manner. Doing so also helps protect data sovereignty, something to which the government is fully committed.

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That India is well on its way to becoming a major global data centre hub is borne out by S&P Global Commodity Insights estimates which expect  the nation to likely become the second largest consumer of data centre electricity in the Asia Pacific region over the next two years, exceeding such demand by Singapore and Australia. 

Clearly, the data centre story has just begun in India.

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