this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
458 points (99.1% liked)
Technology
86219 readers
2923 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I can't wait until this legitimate concern over environmental issues meets up with the reality on the ground.
I work at a DC. We have closed-loop water cooling. We have the same amount of water as a single residential swimming pool in our pipes. It is RO, de-ionized and hyper pure, purchased and brought by a tanker truck. It was filled once, more than a year ago and no more has been "used" since. The toilets use far more water than the servers.
Other companies DO abuse the environment. We would welcome legislation requiring this practice (and others) to make it a level field. There is no need for any DC to behave badly.
Yeah the problems with all these data centers are largely solvable. The power usage part wouldn’t be an issue either if they were also investing in sufficient renewable sources to power these things, but instead when they don’t just dump the burden on whatever is already there they’re always reopening ancient coal plants or setting up gas turbines.
There's still going to be an opportunity cost. You can build massive renewable sources, but powering a data center with it is a shit use compared to other things.