The data coming from the University of Calgary about the data centres they're building in Alberta, Canada seems to indicate that they're using evaporative cooling, which is very expensive water wise.

The bigger concern though, is the power requirements. Which are set to double or triple the energy use of the entire Province (analogous to a State in the US).

https://ucalgary.ca/sustainability/mobilizing-alberta/climat...

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badc0ffee 5 hours ago | parent [-]

There are data centre projects underway that use their own natural gas generators: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/olds-mihta-askiy-data...

Air pollution, GHG and water use are concerns, but these projects will not dramatically increase the load on the electric grid.

Natural gas is cheap and abundant in Alberta, and the province (actually the whole country, via transfer payments) benefits financially from resource revenues from extracting the gas. So, these projects are generally an easy sell to the public.

	▲	softfalcon 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I keep hearing about natural gas and on-site power for these data centres. I'll believe it when I see it. There are already have a couple in Calgary and they're hooked directly to the grid. The cost of electricity for the city shot up at the same time. Also, there have been a few brownouts caused by them not being ready to handle late night draws from those data centres. That's at least what I'm seeing. Though, admittedly, it's from older project articles. Maybe something has changed in recent months? https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/ai-data-centre-albert...