Thread

Improper redaction reveals Google Data Center water and electricity usage

384 points · 503 comments · sensanaty

aliasxneo · 1791145670 · focus · HN ↗
I lived in a smaller rural town near a Google datacenter. During my career there I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them. I remember we hired a local who'd grown up in the town and he was "really surprised" when he started to see what we were doing to remain efficient.
The current data center craze just feels like the same thing but on a bigger scale.
1. michaelt · 1791147121 · focus · HN ↗
  > I had routinely come across some outlandish accusations made about our water/power usage from the locals. But for obvious reasons I could never dispute them.
  It'd be pretty easy for the company to dispel those outlandish accusations - the PR department could just report the true numbers.
  1. minimaxir · 1791147607 · focus · HN ↗
    That would not be good PR because a) it would be seen as flippant and b) no one would believe Google.
    Both things happened when Sam Altman blogged about how much water the median ChatGPT query used.
  2. Ancapistani · 1791147731 · focus · HN ↗
    Google has some custom hardware, so directly reporting it could be an issue.
    Now that it has been, though…
  3. therealpygon · 1791147878 · focus · HN ↗
    Data centers tend to be higher security facilities for a reason. Publicizing any of their technical specs isn’t really beneficial, especially when any numbers that are provided will be dismissed unless even more information is provided to back them up.
    Effectively no reward at any risk level, regardless of whether one agrees if there is actually any risk.
    bluealienpie · 1791148224 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s not high security if everyone is mandated to do it. Power consumption, energy sources, water usage for coolant, waste water treatment plan, etc.
    I think the disinformation is people thinking that data centers directly use vast quantities of water. What happens is the power use stresses water supplies in local areas.
    <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-ai-drought-water" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jun/08/datacenter-a...
    bliteben · 1791148312 · focus · HN ↗
    Absurd! every company ever would love to hide behind these same excuses.
    If they are using over a certain percent of any public utility (and yes ALL utilities are public) the utility should force it to be disclosed.
    dspillett · 1791149935 · focus · HN ↗
    > every company ever would love to hide behind these same excuses.
    Correct. But they can't so easily without Google's (or other big tech companies) big legal departments to make challenging the excuses difficult.
    skyberrys · 1791167186 · focus · HN ↗
    How do you see all utilities as public? What if a commercial building has rooftop solar?
    bix6 · 1791148729 · focus · HN ↗
    How does hiding water usage protect the facility exactly?
    dekhn · 1791149324 · focus · HN ↗
    The big hyperscalers always knew that eventually the tide would turn against them (for example when local towns noticed that the DCs didn't actually need very many locals to run the facilities).
    They carefully hid things so they could expand for as long as possible, knowing that having the necessary footprint for services, cloud, and AI would be key to winning the race. When I worked at Google, our leaders were always "proud" they had built such a huge fleet (originally for search + ads but rapidly growing to a wide range of products and research) without competitors knowing just how large, because they figured eventually AWS and MSFT would realize they had to build out massively to handle the coming loads.
    So they hide these things to stave off complaints for as long as possible.
  4. Eyas · 1791147917 · focus · HN ↗
    Worth considering in the current climate. My impression a while ago is that the exact water and power usage of any large company's data center is seen as a trade secret of sorts; if a large company invested to become XX% efficient, it might not want competitors to know it hit a certain efficiency target.
    bix6 · 1791148677 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    junofan · 1791149335 · focus · HN ↗
    It’s already permitted and operating. Presumably they want the $XX million tax rebates, which haven’t yet been paid out according to this article. Maybe that’s the case in other places too.
    Why not get people riled up over water under the bridge and not unpaid rebates? What can anybody do about it? Send the sheriff to lock out the facility?
    bix6 · 1791149405 · focus · HN ↗
    Sorry but large companies forcing NDAs with public servants does not fly.
    forgetfreeman · 1791151993 · focus · HN ↗
    Absolutely. That shouldn't even be legally possible outside of very narrowly scoped defense contracts.
  5. vmg12 · 1791147927 · focus · HN ↗
    Sam Altman has stated the water usage in multiple interviews (it's low) and people don't believe him.
    bluecheese452 · 1791148014 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    vmg12 · 1791148921 · focus · HN ↗
    Exactly my point
    dspillett · 1791149825 · focus · HN ↗
    Largely because of how many times it could have been stated prior, given it had been a talking point for some time, and the lack of actual evidence (him saying something is not often taken at face value…).
    Of course, they'd like the water thing to stay an issue as it distracts from others. The water problem has been concentrated on because even some of the most adherent climate change deniers recognise that water access is a significant problem in many areas, so it is an issue that can be usefully raised and won't get tied up in the human-caused-climate-change argument. Unfortunately concentrating on that could be distracting from other matters.
    jamiek88 · 1791151734 · focus · HN ↗
    That’s because he’s a known liar. Like he’s famous for his sociopathic lying even amongst sociopathic lying billionaires. Impressive almost.
    tredre3 · 1791156908 · focus · HN ↗
    That may be true, but I have a feeling that even a third party audit wouldn't appease you. If they confirm Sam's numbers, you'll claim that they were bribed. So how can we solve this problem? Can we trust government officials? Are there any non-biased organizations that could do the audit?
    cindyllm · 1791159271 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
    shadowgovt · 1791156453 · focus · HN ↗
    Honestly, the water usage isn't the real issue - the electricity use during a climate crisis is. It's also a huge climate opportunity, because datacenter growth is basically gluing a giant pipe of financer money straight into datacenter and support buildout, and if we passed laws requiring the new electrical capacity be 100% renewable... They'd still spend the money, they're convinced this is the future so no cost is too high (an assertion I feel confident making because we're literally experimenting with putting datacenters in space right now).
    Water use has locally been an issue in places where municipalities were taken advantage of and their local water supply management laws weren't set up to account for a giant consumer to just roll up and start pulling past replenishment rate. But there's nothing about datacenters that demand that be the case; those places were cheap to build in (and why they were cheap to build in should probably be its own graduate political theory thesis / series of fraud and mismanagement investigations and prosecutions).
  6. jonas21 · 1791149714 · focus · HN ↗
    They do! In great detail:
    <a href="https://sustainability.google/files/1699a2e19277e478b38a659f00cb38398a836e8c/download-1699a2e1.pdf" rel="nofollow">https://sustainability.google/files/1699a2e19277e478b38a659f...
    The data tables start on p. 90.

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