How about deleting private ownership of utilities instead?
This is analogous to the “I’m using paper straws while the billionaires take a private jet each to Venice” situation.
So I should delete old mails so that maybe (and actually no, it won’t) there will be less drives to cool in the datacentre while the techbros have entire datacentres using hundreds of terawatts of power[1] and is predicted to be using billions of cubic metres of water per year by 2027[2].
As usual, they’re looking toward the people they can influence to make changes to their lifestyle, and ignoring the people actually doing the damage because they know they will not change.
[1] https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2024: IEA annual report showing that AI and crypto is estimated to have consumed 465tw/h of energy in 2024. [2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-accelerating-the-loss-of-our-scarcest-natural-resource-water: Forbes report stating that AI datacentres are estimated to use around 6.6 billion cubic metres of water by the year 2027.
Going by the Forbes article’s numbers on adult human water consumption, 6.6 billion m^3 would be pretty damn close to the entire human population’s water needs. 2.6 litres per adult per day is 0.949 m^3 over a year, so multiplying that by a world population of 8.2 billion people (I know that’s adults and children but I’m approximating for scale here) is 7.7 billion m^3 of fresh water
2.6L/day might cover drinking water, but definitely not cooking/cleaning/bathing/laundry. Let alone growing food.
A small data center has been estimated to use upwards of 25 million liters of water per year if it relies on old-school cooling methods that allow water to evaporate.
So pass a law banning evaporative cooling systems from all industrial and commercial applications (or single out data centers), give them 6 months to comply and start handing out fines every day past the deadline.
straight up not feasible for many serious and necessary facilities like powerplants and refineries, unless you prefer very warm lake or river nearby (which also cools down by evaporation later)
straight up not feasible
It’s very feasible to create the law, collect the fine, and raise the price on energy sources or industrial process that require the cooling.
It’s a formality, you could do it in an afternoon. Costs a bit of ink and a piece of paper.
“But then it gets more expensive!” and “This might push corporations out of the city/country.” is the consequence the people / the government / the country have to have the balls to endure, if they want to stand by things like “having enough water” or “living on earth in the 22nd century”.
If the free market is something you believe in, you should love this, because it makes water a more scarce resource and the market will be able to find another optimal solution to that new scarcity problem.
Show me how do you want to dissipate 10GWt inland without evaporative cooling towers, i’ll wait
summitsystems.co.uk/adiabatic-coolers-vs-cooling-towers/
There are many solutions to this problem. Evaporative cooling is just the cheapest. But it’s only cheap because we don’t charge these water users market rates for water. If they’re threatening drinking water or agricultural water we should just charge them for water usage the same as you pay for drinking water at home. That’s fundamentally what they’re taking when they drain the rivers dry. That way they compete directly on the water market instead of bypassing it.
They’ll install adiabatic coolers in no time.
cool. and watch the entire right wing go mad over “net zero wokery” and “stealth taxes choking our economy to death.” then watch reform win with a landslide and bulldoze the entire net zero agenda and see where we end up.
The right will always complain no matter what you do, so why bother listening to them and capitulating?
sensibly managing the economy and balancing the need to achieve reduced emissions with the need to maintain a functional economy is not capitulating, and indeed being seen to carefully maintain that balance might be key to election victory in four years time.
