Of the six data centres operated by Google in Europe, its Belgian site near Mons in Wallonia consumes the most water to cool its facilities.
For the first time, Google has revealed the water consumption of its six European data centres for the year 2022 in its environmental report, published on Monday. This shows that the site in Saint-Ghislain (Wallonia) is the most water-hungry. The company has invested nearly €3 billion in the Belgian site since 2007.
Of Google’s six European data centres, Saint-Ghislain is the most water-intensive. It runs on an advanced evaporative cooling system and is the first of all Google centres to operate entirely without mechanical coolers. It is also the fourth most water-intensive of all the data giant's sites worldwide, largely because of it being one of Google’s largest data centres.
The Saint-Ghislain site consumes around one million cubic metres of water for its Saint-Ghislain data centre. This is equivalent to the annual consumption of around 10,700 households in the region, or the amount of water needed to irrigate 1.8 golf courses. In total, Google withdrew 1.44 million m3 in 2022 to prevent the thousands of servers housed here from overheating.
Around 70% of water used evaporates during the cooling process; the remaining 30% was released into the nearby river Haine, at "close to the same temperature," the company told Le Soir.
Reducing freshwater consumption
By comparison, Google's site in Dublin consumed just 378.5 m3. The only data centre to come close to the amount used in Belgium is in Eemshaven, a seaport in the north of the Netherlands (858,500 m3).
But the company highlighted that the site in Saint-Ghislain uses water that is predominantly non-potable (96%) and is taken from the Nimy-Blaton canal which runs alongside the facilities.
The Google data centre in Saint-Ghislain. Credit: Belga/ Laurie Dieffembacq
The only drinking water used is that needed for its canteens and toilets. Globally, non-potable water accounts for just 22.7% of the supply to Google's data centres, due to the activities based in the United States, where practically all the data centres are cooled with drinking water. In Europe, the opposite is true (92% of the supply is non-drinking water).
The company noted that water stress has been exacerbated by climate change. It reiterated its commitment to replenish the water consumed by its facilities pointing to new solutions at its data centres to reduce freshwater consumption. Its centre in Hamina, Finland, uses seawater rather than freshwater.
While Google has become more transparent about its water usage, the report did not detail how much electricity is needed to run the Saint-Ghislain data centre. But the new EU directive on energy efficiency will require operators of large data centres to publish data such as electricity and water consumption from May 2024.
