Microsoft ramps up plans to make its data centers less thirsty

Microsoft today stepped up its commitment to conserving water and energy in its data centers, developing new cooling technologies and strategies that could push notoriously thirsty and energy hungry servers beyond their current limits. The company's latest environmental pledge is to dramatically expand the number of data centers it operates around the world, a move that could place greater stress on drought-hit communities if the company can't find a way to use less water.

Microsoft plans to reduce the water consumption of its data centers by 95 percent by 2024 with the aim of "finally" eliminating water consumption. This builds on last year's commitment to become “water positive” by the end of the decade, which means replenishing more water than it uses to run its operations. In 2020, Microsoft also made a commitment to go carbon negative by the same deadline, meaning it plans to absorb and store more planet-warming CO2 than it releases.

Plans to drastically expand the number of data centers

Microsoft today also announced other sustainability efforts that could reduce greenhouse gas emissions inside and outside the company. It is looking for building materials for its data centers that are less carbon intensive, including research on bricks made from algae and structural pipes made from mushrooms. It also previewed a new tool called Microsoft Cloud for Sustainability, which companies can use to track their carbon emissions.

But the big commitment concerns the data centers. Data centers like Microsoft's are jam-packed with servers that allow people to store files, send messages, and shop and play online. All of these activities use a lot of energy and generate heat. Overheating can affect the performance and reliability of servers, but when they are air-conditioned, power consumption and greenhouse gas emissions increase. It is possible to use water to cool servers, but water is an increasingly scarce resource in many dry locations where data centers operate.

A typical data center uses about as much water as a city of about 30,000 to 40,000 people, or about 3 to 5 million gallons of water per day, says Venkatesh Uddameri, professor and director of the Water Resources Center at Texas Tech University. Microsoft tells The Verge that its data centers are using less water, although this varies by region and climate.

Microsoft's data centers currently use adiabatic cooling, which relies on outside air to cool the temperatures inside. It's a system that uses less electricity than air conditioners and less water than cooling towers. But when temperatures rise above 85 degrees Celsius, outside air isn't very helpful. At this point an evaporative cooling system kicks in using water. It works like a "sump cooler" - cools the air by pushing it over or through water-soaked sieves.

Microsoft today announced two main strategies it intends to rely on to meet its water conservation goals. First, it looked at how its servers functioned at higher temperatures and found that it could set higher limits on the use of the centers' evaporative cooling systems. In cooler parts of the world - including Amsterdam, Dublin, Virginia, and Chicago - these higher set points could completely eliminate water needs in the next few years.

Data centers in desert regions, where water scarcity is a major concern, are likely to continue to gobble up water

But Microsoft's data centers in desert regions, where water scarcity is a bigger problem, are likely to swallow water for years longer. Microsoft says the same strategy that could eliminate water use in Amsterdam and Dublin would only reduce water use in desert regions by up to 60 percent by 2024.

This is where the second part of Microsoft's plan comes into play. To reduce its water footprint to zero in these hot and dry climates, Microsoft is planning a new way of cooling servers: immersing them in fluorocarbon-based liquid baths. While the servers are working, the heat they generate will bring the liquid to a boil when it reaches 50 degrees Celsius. The boiling liquid conducts heat away from the servers and then turns into rising vapor. The steam hits a chilled tank cap, condenses, and rains back into the tub. The process, known as two-phase liquid immersion, creates a closed cooling system that reduces water and electricity consumption while removing heat. It's a strategy the company says was inspired by cryptocurrency miners who also consume huge amounts of energy and have turned to liquid cooling for computing devices.

While the experts at The Verge said the technology looks promising, they say that getting it working on a large scale will be another challenge. Microsoft just announced its first test run of immersion cooling in April and says this technology is still in the research and development phase. According to Lucas Beran, principal analyst at research firm Dell'Oro Group, very few data centers - probably less than 2 percent - rely on immersion cooling.

"A massive operating switch"

“Think also of the size of someone like Microsoft, who provides the number of data centers they build and the amount of computing power they provide - this is a massive supply chain move. That's a huge operating switch, ”says Beran. Microsoft needs to study and plan how this change will affect data center performance and train employees to work in new environments, he said. "It is a very big endeavor, but it has some extremely positive potential outcomes."

Microsoft announced to The Verge that it will be taking a step-by-step approach to introducing its new data center cooling strategies. Immersion cooling requires new, purpose-built servers, and Microsoft will wait until its server configurations are out of date before replacing them in existing data centers. Even the plethora of new data centers the company is planning will likely be built with hybrid cooling systems first when it moves to the new immersion technology.

Microsoft plans to build 50 to 100 new data centers annually to keep pace with demand for its cloud services. It is said that worldwide internet traffic should double by next year. This is a great opportunity for the company, but also a great challenge for the company's new sustainability goals.

Pay special attention to places with more water stress

Tensions have risen over data centers in Arizona, for example, where Microsoft opened a new one this year. After federal authorities declared the first water shortage on the Colorado River in August, Arizona is threatened with water cuts. The cuts so far will primarily restrict water for agriculture, but some residents fear that new data centers in the region will only intensify competition for the already scarce water resources.

The company must address specific issues at each location where it establishes a data center, and pay special attention to locations with more water stress. “There is no one-size-fits-all solution,” says Uddameri. "As a company you can become water-positive, but it is of no use if, in extreme cases, you save all the water in one place and create major deficits elsewhere."

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