Professor John Robertson OBA
BBC Scotland today has the above headline and:
Data centres powering artificial intelligence (AI) in Scotland are using enough tap water to fill 27 million half-litre bottles a year, according to data obtained by BBC News.
AI systems such as the large language models (LLMs) that power OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini require warehouses full of specialist computers.
The equipment is power-hungry, consuming large amounts of energy, but they also use tonnes of water in their cooling systems to stop the servers overheating.
Freedom of Information data shows the volume of tap water used by Scotland’s data centres has quadrupled since 2021.
OK, 27 million half -litre bottles is 13.5 million litre bottles.
Where on earth will we get that? We’ll, in Scotland from just three of us?
Scotland has 5.5 million litres of water per person, 40 times that in England
Scotland’s Loch Ness alone contains 7,452 million cubic meters [745 million litres] of water, which is more than the combined volume of all lakes and reservoirs in England and Wales.
https://www.environment.gov.scot/our-environment/water/scotland-s-freshwater/ https://www.nature.scot/landscapes-and-habitats/habitat-types/lochs-rivers-and-wetlands/freshwater-lochs
England and Wales, by contrast, have far fewer natural lakes, with reservoirs like Rutland Water (12.5 km²) and Kielder Reservoir being among the largest, but their total volume is significantly less than Scotland’s.
http://www.fao.org/3/T0798E16.htm
Scotland’s water reserves are estimated at 30 trillion litres [5.5 million litres per person], compared to England’s 134,000 liters per person, highlighting a vast disparity due to Scotland’s smaller population (around 5.5 million) and abundant resources compared to England’s larger population (around 56 million). Scotland is often cited as having around 90% of the UK’s freshwater resources, largely due to its extensive loch system and higher rainfall (averaging 1,500–3,000 mm annually compared to England’s lower averages, particularly in the south).
https://www.studycountry.com/wiki/does-scotland-have-more-fresh-water-than-england https://www.thenational.scot/news/19515230.big-corporations-could-make-scotlands-water-next-oil/
So, the data centres need 13.5 million litres. Three of us, 16.5 million litres, should do that. That is only 0.00004% of the 30 trillion available.
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so why are more of the planned data centers not being built in Scotland? I can’t remember the number given in a recent article but I do remember that only one was planned in Scotland and that wasn’t ca10% of the total. We have the space and the energy. Oh it might attract jobs and opportunities, right?
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A good debunking of a fairly typical BBC Scotland scare story – ‘we are too wee and no good enough tae manage somethin like this’ is the tacit message.
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It won’t have escaped notice that typically BBC Scot use a familiar trait when they want a headline to cause the maximum amount of fear and alarm by using ’27million.. half litres’ instead of 13.5million one litre’ just to further emphasize the point that I guess parents must now start using half a bath water for babies baths to avert catastrophe later and we are all doomed. Doomed.
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