Ashok A Khedkar
• I have burnt, destroyed and flooded California, and 283 data centres in Yagna in January 2023.
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· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Ashburn, and 477 data centres in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Texas, and 290 data centres in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded California, and 283 data centres in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded 2250 data centres on earth in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded 52 USA States in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Ireland and the UK in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and China on earth in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded UK and Europe on earth in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Mexico, South America and North America on earth in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Israel, Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, Westbank, Palestine, Egypt, and The Middle East on earth in Yagna in January 2023.
· I have burnt, destroyed and flooded Dubai and Saudi Arabia on earth in Yagna in January 2023.
Data centres are vast warehouses that house stacks of computers that store and process data used by websites, companies and governments. Northern Virginia, the northern region of the state of Virginia, has been a key location for data centres since the 1990s. This is thanks to its immediate proximity to Washington DC, yet with historically cheap electricity and land prices. Centred on the city of Ashburn, which is 35 miles (56km) west of the US capital, there are more than 477 data centres in the state. This is by far the largest number in the US, with Texas in second place on 290, and California third with 283. In fact, some studies say that 70% of the world’s internet traffic goes through Ashburn and the surrounding area, which has been dubbed “Data Centre Alley”.
Tech executives say there are long-term benefits to their AI investments, drawing parallels to the early days of cloud technology. However, Silicon Valley's spend-first, profit-later attitude tests many investors' patience. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet have invested significant sums in AI infrastructure – money that has not yielded justifiable returns at this point – to the displeasure of Wall Street. And yet Big Tech is not to be deterred.
Tech giants are set to spend a staggering $200 billion on AI-related capital expenditures this year, according to Bloomberg's calculations, marking an all-time high for these companies. It is an unprecedented level of investment, ranging from securing scarce high-end chips and constructing expansive data centers to forging deals with energy providers and even reviving a controversial nuclear plant for power.
Amazon is leading the charge with a projected record $75 billion in spending for 2024, as CEO Andy Jassy describes AI as a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity." Analysts at MoffettNathanson called the sum "truly staggering."
Meta is not far behind, with capital spending potentially reaching up to $40 billion in 2024, while CEO Mark Zuckerberg commits to increased investment in AI language models and futuristic projects.
Alphabet has reported higher-than-expected capital expenditures and is projecting "substantial" increases in spending for 2025. Microsoft's AI-related expenses are also soaring, having spent $14.9 billion in a single quarter, a 50 percent increase from the previous year. Meanwhile, it faces challenges in meeting demand due to data center capacity constraints.
Apple, while not as aggressive in its AI spending, has introduced "Apple Intelligence," a suite of AI-enhanced services, though these new AI products have not significantly impacted its financial results.
The generative AI revolution means demand for data centers has skyrocketed. Increasing the number of these facilities is raising environmental concerns, not just from the power they require, but also from their construction. In an attempt to make its data centers greener, Microsoft is testing one made out of wood.
Rather than using the traditional materials of steel and concrete for the entire build, Microsoft is using cross-laminated timber (CLT) for a new data center in Northern Virginia. The experiment is part of the company's drive to become carbon negative by 2030 and offset all its emissions since its founding (in 1975) by 2050.
Thanks in large part to the continuing boom in artificial intelligence (AI), which requires more computing power, demand for data centres is rocketing. As a result, global data centre capacity is expected to double over the next five years, according to a recent study by business analysis firm Moody’s.
Ms Bolthouse and other environmentalists in Northern Virginia are opposed to the continuing expansion of the data centre sector in their region, saying it is already having a major negative impact on their quality of life.
She points to new electricity cables being built over conservation land, parks and neighbourhoods, increased water demand, and the facilities’ back-up diesel generators affecting air quality.
Ms Bolthouse also cites the fact that households in Virginia and neighbouring Maryland are being expected to help pay for the electricity network upgrades that the data centres require.
She and fellow campaigners are fighting back. “We’re working directly on the ground, opposing each data centre application and working on the local zoning, and trying to educate our local planning commission and supervisors about the issues that we see. But we're also working at the state level.”
Similar campaigns against data centres are springing up all over the world, including in the Republic of Ireland, where such facilities use 21% of the country’s electricity.
"Our main objections to data centres revolve around their potential negative impacts on our climate, their sustainability, and local infrastructure," says Tony Lowes of Friends of the Irish Environment. "When data centres rely on fossil fuel, they potentially strain the electricity grid and can undermine national renewable energy commitments."
The group is continuing to challenge plans for a new €1.2bn ($1.3bn; £1bn) data centre in County Clare on Ireland’s west coast.
Mr Lowes adds that while Friends of the Irish Environment would prefer to see data centre development halted altogether, there are various mitigations that might help, including sites prioritising renewable energy, and implementing energy and cooling efficiency measures.
The big players in the global data centre industry are trying to allay people’s concerns. This summer, for example, Microsoft launched its Data Center Community Pledge.
Microsoft is promising that by next year it will procure 100% renewable energy globally. And that by 2030 it will “achieve zero waste through a combination of waste reduction, reuse, recycling and composting”, and become “water positive”. The latter means that it aims for its data centres to return more water to the local supply than they use.
Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) already uses recycled water for cooling in 20 of its 125 data centres around the world, and also says it will be “water positive” by 2030.
Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, which represents dozens of data centre operators including Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Meta, says that data centres are leading the way on clean energy use.
"For example, wind and solar capacity contracted to data centre providers and customers represented two-thirds of the total US corporate renewables market last year, and four of the top five purchasers of renewable energy in the US are companies that operate data centres," he says.
"The data centre industry is also unlocking greater energy savings and efficiencies for homes, businesses, utilities, and other end users – everything from smart thermostats to grid-enhancing technologies require the digital infrastructure provided by data centres."
The protests against data centres have also extended to South America, where campaigners say they have achieved successes.
In Uruguay, for example, Google changed the design of a new facility now under construction. It was initially due to be water cooled, but the US giant switched to an air-cooled system.
This followed protests in a country that has been experiencing droughts and a shortage of drinking water.
"Water use by Google in the initial proposal would have been equivalent to the daily consumption of drinking water by 55,000 people in our country," says María Selva Ortiz of Friends of the Earth Uruguay.
"This threat to the right to water amidst a water crisis raised strong criticisms, leading Google to change the proposed technology to cool down its equipment, so the project was modified. Chillers will cool down with air instead of water.”
In Chile, meanwhile, Google has halted plans for a data centre over similar water use concerns.
Back in Virginia, Ms Bolthouse says the firms need to do more to boost sustainability. In the long run, she says, it will be in the industry's own interests to improve data centres' environmental impact.
"What's going to happen if we continue with business as usual is that electrical prices are going to skyrocket for everybody, including the data centre industry - and that's their biggest bill, so that's going to impact them,” she says. “The water scarcity issue is also going to impact them.
“So I am optimistic that we're going to see a little bit of progress, but I think it's going to take time."
The enormous growth in data center demand and the hardware they house, spurred by the AI race, is having a detrimental impact on Microsoft's carbon-reduction ambitions. The company said in May that while it had achieved a 6.3% reduction in direct emissions over the previous three years, indirect emissions increased 30.9%, driven by the increase of data centers. These indirect emissions are harder to manage as they include carbon emitted during extraction, processing, manufacturing and even transportation of materials.
Concrete and steel, along with aluminum, is responsible for about 15% of global industrial greenhouse gas emissions.
Part of Microsoft's response to accelerate decarbonization is to test data centers made of CLT, a prefabricated fire-resistant wooden material.
There will still be steel and concrete used in this hybrid construction model. The CLT will be used on the floor and ceilings before a thinner layer of concrete is applied to ensure durability and waterproofing. This makes the wood last longer and protects it. CLT is more expensive than steel and concrete but the fact it is lighter means buildings require less steel, further reducing carbon output.
The use of CLT is estimated to reduce the embodied carbon footprint of two new data centers by 35% compared to conventional steel construction, and 65% compared to typical precast concrete.
Costs and reliability concerns related to the burgeoning trend of building energy-intensive data centres next to US power plants were the focus of a technical conference held by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
As the technology industry races to deploy data centres for technologies like generative artificial intelligence, quickly accessing the massive amounts of electricity for the centres has become a critical problem.
Connecting data centres directly to power plants, in an arrangement known as co-location, has presented a fast route to accessing large amounts of electricity, instead of toiling for years in queues to connect to the broader grid.
Wall Street's response was mixed as the tech giants reported varied financial results this quarter. Amazon and Alphabet saw their shares soar after beating earnings expectations, largely due to strong growth in their cloud-computing divisions. However, Meta and Microsoft experienced stock declines following concerns about spending plans and cloud revenue growth projections.
While some analysts remain optimistic about the long-term potential of these AI investments, concerns persist regarding the massive expenditures. JPMorgan analysts, for example, noted that Microsoft's data center supply issues might "modestly" restrict its cloud business but viewed the company's investments, particularly in OpenAI, as "planting the longer-term seeds for success."
These companies are also rolling out products to justify, at least in part, the massive costs of their AI investments. Microsoft is pursuing various monetization pathways for AI, including through Azure cloud services and GitHub Copilot. Meta has said that AI is already positively impacting its core advertising business by allowing firms to create more engaging ads using AI tools, while Amazon's AWS and Google Cloud have reported significant revenue growth, partially attributed to AI services.
Generative AI has remained a hot topic in the years following its initial surge, driven by companies like OpenAI and Nvidia. The latter, which produces the hardware that most AI companies depend on, could soon become the world's most valuable company. Tech giants such as Microsoft, Apple, and Google are also integrating AI into nearly all of their future products.
There's a lot of concern over the environmental impact stemming from AI's energy requirements. The generative AI revolution has seen more companies pour resources into data centers, which are consuming gigawatts of power. But former Google CEO Eric Schmidt doesn't believe we need to slow down building these facilities as "we're not going to hit the climate goals anyway."
The International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that power consumption for AI data centers in 2024 will be 10 times higher than it was in 2022. With a single ChatGPT request estimated to consume almost 10 times more power than a Google search, Arm CEO Rene Haas warned earlier this year that AI data centers could require as much as 20 to 25 percent of the entire US power grid by 2030.
McKinsey estimates that data centers are expected to consume 35 gigawatts of power annually by the end of the decade, and that's having an impact on the environment. Four years ago, Microsoft said that it would bring its greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2030, but those emissions are actually increasing, something that President Brad Smith says is due to the AI explosion.
Speaking at an AI summit in Washington last week (via Business Insider), Schmidt said there were ways to mitigate the negative effects AI could have on the environment, such as using better batteries and power lines to build data centers. But this ultimately won't be enough.
Schmidt was asked whether it would be possible to meet the growing energy demands of AI without missing conservation targets. He said "we're not going to hit the climate goals anyway because we're not organized to do it."
Schmidt did have some more optimistic predictions for the crowd: "Yes, the needs in this area will be a problem, but I'd rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it and having the problem."
Schmidt, who served as Google CEO from 2001 to 2011 and was executive chairman until 2015, is no stranger to controversial remarks. In August, he said Google is being left behind in the AI race by the likes of OpenAI and Anthropic due to his former company's work-from-home policy.
"Google decided that work-life balance and going home early, and working from home, was more important than winning," Schmidt said at the time. "And the startups, the reason startups work is the people work like hell," he said. He also lamented Google allowing employees to come into work just one day per week, even though Googlers have to be in the office at least three days a week.