Dear Google,
We Want to Help You Stay Ambitious
Google released its 2024 Environmental Report last week. In addition to it being an unfortunate masterclass in greenwashing1, it is also a stark reminder of how data centres are driving the climate crisis.
Why are Data Centers the Villains in the Climate Story?
1. Green House Gas Emissions
More data to be stored implies more data centers and consequently more electricity consumption as the servers need to be powered 24*7. In 2023, Google’s total GHG emissions were 14.3 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is 13% higher than the emissions of the previous year.
These GHGs play a significant role in driving the rise in global average temperatures, which result in adverse climatic conditions threatening several species including ours.
This is all set to grow as Google aggressively pursues an AI-first approach to their tools, requiring more energy to power data centers. Switching to renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind is a good approach in theory, but we still do not have the battery infrastructure to power all data centers using renewables. We desperately need an alternative to conventional data centers.
2. Water Consumption
As data centers consume more and more electricity, they tend to heat up. As a result, servers need to be continuously cooled and indoor temperatures maintained. Cooling of data centers consumes massive amounts of water, which is often derived from fresh water sources.
While Google acknowledges that this is a challenge, they admit that they have no other alternative but to continue using as much water as they do (or even more).
“In 2023, our data centers consumed 6.1 billion gallons of water—17% more water than the previous year, mirroring similar growth in electricity use. To put this into perspective, in 2023 our data centers used the same amount of water needed to irrigate roughly 41 golf courses annually, on average, in the southwestern United States……. While it will take more time for electricity grids to decarbonize, we’ll continue using water cooling to improve our energy efficiency in certain geographies.” - Google Environmental Report 2024
In Arizona2, Uruguay and Chile3, local communities are protesting against data centres set up by Big Tech companies including Google because their regions have now become more vulnerable to droughts and water scarcity thanks to the water hogging servers.
Even if these protests don’t affect Google, they need to switch to sustainable options if they want to keep powering their data centers for the next 100 years (it’s ironic how water is also the life blood of digital data that is so disconnected from living systems).
3. Waste Generation
Data centers generate massive amounts of electronic waste, as the hard drives, SSDs and other components powering data servers are replaced every few years. Most of this waste ends up in landfills, and take hundreds of thousands of years to degrade.
As of 2023, only 29% (8 out of 28) of Google-owned and -operated data center campuses met their Zero Waste to Landfill goal. We desperately need more sustainable hardware to store and manage data, and it doesn’t look like silicon-based business as usual hardware is going to cut it.
Google and Ambition
Google is one of the most ambitious companies in the world - starting out with a mission to make all of the world’s information available at our fingertips. In John Doerr’s book ‘Measure What Matters’, he describes the story of how some of the earliest engineers at Google started putting together a lot of storage hardware and connecting them using an entangled mesh of wires so that users could access Google searches in the shortest possible time. In that sense, Google played a crucial role in creating the concept of data centers as we see them today.
And yet when it comes to tackling the climate crisis, their ambition seems to dwindle.
“Reaching net-zero emissions by 2030 is an extremely ambitious goal and we know it won’t be easy. Our approach will continue to evolve and will require us to navigate significant uncertainty–including the uncertainty around the future environmental impact of AI, which is complex and difficult to predict. In addition, solutions for some key global challenges don’t currently exist, and will depend heavily on the broader clean energy transition. As our business and industry continue to evolve, we expect our total GHG emissions TARGET to rise before dropping toward our absolute emissions reduction target.”
- Google Environment Report, 2024
At BioCompute, we want to help Google stay ambitious, by leveraging DNA as an affordable storage medium to cut down on their GHG emissions, water consumption and e-waste production making data centers 1000x more energy efficient.
We want to work with Google (and other tech giants) to co-create the next generation of data centers, which might not really be data centers as we know them today, much like how someone who worked with the ENIAC4 would not have imagined walking around with a smart phone a couple of decades down the line.
If you work with Google, or know decision makers there who would be the best people to chat to about what we are building at BioCompute, hit me up. The next coffee/tea/milk shake is on me.
P.S. A shout out to Ram from the SusMafia community for sharing Google’s Environmental Report with me and sparking this conversation
P.S.S. If you come across something interesting that we at BioCompute should read or watch, send it across. We will be eternally grateful.
Hey there I have same project last summer internship,I am 4th year IISER student , interest in startup