The News
A Chilean court handed environmentalists a partial win on Tuesday after it ruled Google must revise its application for the construction of a $200 million data center in Santiago in order to take into account the impact of climate change.
Google first received initial authorization of its Cerrillos Data Center in 2020, but the plan was met with fierce resistance from locals who said it would exacerbate the ongoing Chilean drought by using residents’ water supplies to help cool its servers. After a previous court fight, Google revealed the data center would use 7.6 million liters (2 million gallons) of potable water a day. The tech giant later said it would switch to an air cooling system.
But the court ultimately ruled that the initial environmental assessment was still sufficient despite Google’s changes.
SIGNALS
Big Tech quietly increasing water usage as AI demand surges
Microsoft, Google, and Meta have all quietly and significantly raised their water usage to cool down data centers in recent years, coinciding with the development of AI models. Google’s usage increased by 22% over a two year period and Microsoft by 34%, according to 2022 figures — the latest available — as cited by the Financial Times. Requesting 10 to 50 responses on ChatGPT’s older GPT3 model is equivalent to drinking a 500 ml bottle of water — depending on when and where the inputs were prompted — one academic told the FT. OpenAI has remained relatively quiet about its total water usage, but told the outlet that it believes its models will be “helpful in accelerating scientific collaboration and discovery of climate solutions.”
Activists accuse authorities of disregarding Indigenous rights
Environmental groups have for years warned of “serious shortcomings” in Chile’s environmental regulation, with regulators responsible for greenlighting projects like the Cerrillo data center, according to CIPER, a Chilean investigative news agency. Of particular concern are projects that exploit the resources of Indigenous people — which in Chile is primarily the result of mining and hydroelectricity projects, according to a 2023 study. More than 34% of environmental complaints in Chile over the last decade have been directed at projects that impact Indigenous territories, an earlier 2021 study by El Desconcierto found. One researcher told the newspaper that Chilean regulators have weak oversight because they are “very young institutions” — the environment ministry, for example, was only established in 2010.
Uruguayans protest Google’s ‘data colonialism’
Google last year announced plans to build a separate data center in Montevideo, but locals are decrying the move as “data colonialism,” accusing the tech giant of exploiting “cheap water and electricity and lax environmental standards,” according to environmental news site Mongabay. In addition to Montevideo’s own drought, one Uruguayan researcher told Mongabay that the data center will do little to boost the local economy — adding only about 30 jobs once completed — and it will forego taxes because it is being constructed on a duty-free zone. The data center is also not a “permanent industry” because data centers’ lifespans are typically between 5 and 20 years, the researcher said.