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AI data centres could be running our water reserves dry in a matter of years, with Australia’s largest water utility warning that a quarter of the city’s drinking water could be slurped up by AI in a decade.
Australia’s future as a potential AI powerhouse has sent waves throughout the energy and critical infrastructure industries, which have begun the scramble to ready themselves for the resources AI data centres will sap.
The nation’s largest water utility, Sydney Water, says that by 2035, AI data centres will be skulling 25 per cent of Sydney’s drinking water supply every year. For context, these data centres currently use less than 1 per cent of that supply, at 3.5 billion litres.
Australia currently has 260 data centres, 89 of which are based in Sydney and according to Sydney Water, use the city’s public drinking water supply for their cooling needs.
This number is only set to grow, with estimates suggesting that Australia will have 175 to as many as 350 new data centres by 2030, according to a report by commercial real estate and property investment company JLL.
Additionally, OpenAI is eyeing Australia as a future AI powerhouse, having just announced plans for a new Sydney office, and previously releasing a 10-step actionable plan for Australia’s AI future.
“Australia has the potential to become the Indo-Pacific’s trusted hub for AI infrastructure,” OpenAI said.
“OpenAI’s Stargate, a multibillion-dollar data centre project in the US, is already generating thousands of jobs and expanding critical AI infrastructure. It offers a blueprint for how strategic compute investments can drive economic growth, workforce development, and technological leadership. Australia now has an opportunity to benefit in the same way.
“Australia leads on the core building blocks of data centre competitiveness: it has the highest land availability among peer nations, strong policy stability, efficient permitting processes and abundant access to renewable energy. These advantages, more than just low-average electricity costs, reinforce its appeal for major infrastructure investment.”
However, these data centres are having very real impacts on the lives of people nearby, with the BBC reporting on a woman in the US who has limited access to water because of her home’s close proximity to a data centre in Georgia.
What’s the solution?
Already data centres are adopting solutions that make water-cooling more efficient, such as closed loop systems, direct-to-chip liquid cooling and more.
As covered by the ABC, Canberra company CDC has been using fully recycled water systems for cooling for years after being forced to adopt the technology following the Millenium Drought, which went from 1996 to 2012.
The close loop recycled system used by the company is designed to save as much as 5 billion litres of water a year.
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