One Goal

 The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon announced 14,000 workers would be laid off on Tuesday. This is just a first move in layoffs that are expected to affect as many as 30,000 corporate jobs. An “Observant Economist” noted:

“Apparently the most important thing in the whole world right now is creating as many data centers as possible with the primary goal of AI for throwing average people out of work. It is more important than housing or the deficit, more important than climate change, endangered water supplies or a hijacked and plundered electric grid, more important than quality of life or stopping genocide. Only data centers can create our future and nothing else counts.”

Northern Virginia is the largest data center market in the world, constituting 13% of all reported data center operational capacity globally and 25% of capacity in the Americas. The data center industry is growing rapidly in both in established markets and newer ones.

Just to give you a snapshot of Prince William County data center growth, currently there are 33 data centers in operation in Prince William County with an estimated square footage of around 10,000,000 square feet of space.  Currently under construction or development is an additional 59,000,000 square feet of data centers. This excludes the digital gateway project whose rezoning was voided, but is under appeal.

The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission (JLARC) issued their report on the impacts of the data center industry in Virginia. Below are excerpts from the Commission’s report .

JLARC found that a substantial amount of new power generation and transmission infrastructure will be needed in Virginia to meet this energy demand or even half of this unconstrained demand. Building enough infrastructure to meet energy demand will be very difficult to achieve and cannot be accomplished while meeting the Virginia Clean Economy Act (VCEA) requirements. We either must slow or limit the construction of data centers in Virginia or repeal the VCEA. You can’t do both.

Water is our most important or critical resource (no water, no people) and how we manage its use or allow its abuse may determine the fate of our region. On earth all the water that ever was or will be is here right now and has been here for over 4 billion years. There is no mechanism on earth for making or destroying water. Mankind has interrupted the flow of streams and rivers by diverting water for irrigation, withdrawing drinking water,  industrial water and building reservoirs. We have also interrupted the recharge of groundwater by changing land use, covering former open land and woodlands  with buildings, driveways, roads, walkways and other impervious surfaces which reduce groundwater recharge in the surrounding area. 

The Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments projects that the population in our region will reach nearly 6.8 million people by 2050 an increase of 1.1 million people, while our available water resources will not increase. Though only recently noticed by our communities, data centers use lots of water. Not at the magnitude of power use, but nonetheless they are estimated to use about 0.5 gallons of water for each kilowatt-hour consumed- millions of gallons a day and growing. Unfortunately, power usage and water usage at specific sites are guarded as trade secrets so we cannot adequately plan for the power nor the water demand as the region’s data centers continue to be built out. The approval process has given a blank check to put unlimited demand on limited resources.

Once the temperature nears 95 degrees Fahrenheit (summer), water cooling is uniformly used in data centers. In a water-cooled system, water-cooled chillers and cooling towers located on top of the data center roofs produce chilled water, which is delivered to computer room air conditioners for cooling the entire building. These systems include the cooling towers, chillers, pumps, piping, heat exchangers / condensers, and air conditioner units in the computer rooms. Additionally, data centers need water for their humidification systems (to avoid static discharges) and facility maintenance.

 Changing climate and population growth are only exacerbating an already existing problem. Our region is already experiencing water stress in the summers.