This story was originally published byGrist.
Earlier this year, the e-commerce corporation Amazon secured approval to opentwonew data centersin Santiago, Chile.
This week, the tech giant made a separate but related announcement.
Amazon’s office building in Seattle, Washington.Image: Skorzewiak/Shutterstock
One 2021 studyfound thatU.S.
data centers consumed around 415,000 acre-feet of water in 2018, even before the artificial-intelligence boom.
One recent estimate found that ChatGPT requires anaverage-sized bottle of waterfor every 10 to 50 chat responses it provides.
Amazon doesnt provide statistics on its absolute water consumption; Hewes told Grist the company is focused on efficiency.
Even so, the companys expansion in Virginia is already causing concernsover water availability.
That data center uses around 20 percent of the power plants capacity.
Amazon isnt the only company dealing with this problem.
It masks out a lot of real problems, because water is a really regional issue.
This article originally appeared inGrist.
Grist is a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future.
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