“I can’t drink the water’ – life next to a US data centre. When Beverly Morris retired in 2016, she thought she had found her dream home – a peaceful stretch of rural Georgia, surrounded by trees and quiet.
Today, it’s nothing but.
Just 400 yards (366m) from her front porch in Mansfield, Georgia, sits a large, windowless building filled with servers, cables, and blinking lights.
It’s a data centre – one of many popping up across small-towns in America, and around the globe, to power everything from online banking to artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT.
According to McKinsey, AI is expected to use about 12 per cent of the country’s energy by the end of the ongoing decade
“I can’t live in my home with half of my home functioning and no water,” Ms Morris says. “I can’t drink the water.”
She believes the construction of the centre, which is owned by Meta (the parent company of Facebook), disrupted her private well, causing an excessive build-up of sediment. Ms Morris now hauls water in buckets to flush her toilet.
She says she had to fix the plumbing in her kitchen to restore water pressure. But the water that comes out of the tap still has residue in it. “I’m afraid to drink the water, but I still cook with it, and brush my teeth with it,” says Morris. “Am I worried about it? Yes.”
Meta, however, says the two aren’t connected.
In a statement to the BBC, Meta said that “being a good neighbour is a priority”.
The company commissioned an independent groundwater study to investigate Morris’s concerns. According to the report, its data centre operation did “not adversely affect groundwater conditions in the area.
While Meta disputes that it has caused the problems with Ms Morris’ water, there’s no doubt, in her estimation, that the company has worn out its welcome as her neighbour. This was my perfect spot,” she says. “But it isn’t anymore.”
Huge data centres are being built across the state of Georgia.
The exponential growth of digital economy in Pakistan reflects how broader is the scope of digitalization in this modern era of technology. For digital services, cloud computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) heavily rely on data centres. To keep pace with rapidly evolving digitization, data centres in various cities have been established, which are being constantly upgraded.
Though data centers are an inescapable necessity to cope with the rising demands for a digital Pakistan, there are increasing energy and water demands at the same time to utilize technology like AI and cloud computing. The data centres are situated in major cities like Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Faisalabad and Hyderabad. The current number is less compared to the countries with more developed economies. Even with its skewed economy, Pakistan needs more data centres to cope with the increasing trend of digitization and its overall scope in the country’s sustainable development agenda.
Data centres at Islamabad and Karachi are of Tier-III standard, which can undergo maintenance and repairs without disrupting operations. There is a built-in redundancy in power and cooling system. They are expected to function at 99.2 per cent efficiency.
In the years to come, more data centers will come up to meet the increasing demand of digital transformation, cloud adoption, government initiatives, and likely foreign investment. There are possibilities of Chinese investment under China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) for hyperscale data centres to be established.
In most countries, data centres run on fossil fuels severely affecting the climate because of carbon emissions. According to McKinsey, a consultancy firm in the USA, AI is expected to use about 12 per cent of the country’s energy by the end of the ongoing decade, which means exhausting more fossil fuels and contributing more to carbon emissions.
Generally, data centers require a heavy amount of power and water to consume for their operations. Though power runs through their servers and generates heat, water is used in cooling heat generated by the equipment. Now, the question arises that what is the exact amount of power and water currently being consumed by data centers in Pakistan? Presently, no authorized data is available on the likely consumption of an exact amount of electric power and water by the data centres in Pakistan. Similarly, no one knows what more amounts would be required by the end of this decade.
Based on global trends, 2023 estimates indicated that data centres in Pakistan consume about 500 GWh per year which is about 1.2 per cent of total electricity generation. With 5G expansion and the country’s digitization, electric power consumption will increase to 2,500 GWh per year by 2034. This would be about 3 per cent of Pakistan’s total electric power demand. According to Internet sources, water consumption by data centres would rise to about 30 billion liters per year with a significant increase during the next 10 years. To cope with the increased energy and water demands of data centres, Pakistan will have to keep pace with the rapidly evolving technologies by adopting relevant and required policies. In this situation, there is an urgent need to use clean energy solar, wind, and hydro power, combine grid power with renewable and battery storage, and optimize cooling techniques for high density servers. The employment of AI will be necessary to predict cooling requirements. The role of information and telecommunication will be important to ensure that the energy and water are optimally used as per requirements. Regulatory policies, public-private sector collaboration, and adopting the best international practices would be important elements to cope with the data centres’ requirements.
Pakistan needs more data centres for digitization in future. While the establishment of such facilities is in the offing, the government needs to strive more to liberalize the economy and promote commercial activities to create and receive an impact of digitization. Besides, anticipated challenges like insufficient fiberization, cyber security, environmental concerns, increasing heat and financial investments will have to be taken care of.
Key requirements to ensure a secure and sustainable data center ecosystem need very careful and long-range planning to ensure that the system would remain within limits in the use of electric power and water. The government must ensure that the system is regularly monitored, and corrective measures are taken to mitigate challenges that may have negative effects on the environment and society. Periodic public-private dialogues should be organized to facilitate collaboration between policy makers, regulators, technologists and investors to ensure a secure and sustainable data center ecosystem in Pakistan.
The writer is a Senior Advisor Emeritus at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute Islamabad.