A month ago, Google released its 2024 sustainability report. Its overall water consumption increased by 28% in a year.  Less publicized than the data center energy boom, water is also pivotal for the Tech industry and data is even scarcer.  

To better understand this secret but serious love affair between big tech and water, what better location to investigate than its birth place? Yes. THE silicon valley. And no one there is better qualified to explore the topic than Masheika Allgood who lives in Santa Clara and recently created a Data Center Water Consumption Calculator based on public data. Over their conversation, Gael Duez and her covered: 

And much much more!

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Masheika Allgood (00:02 )

Okay, so let me say that a 100 megawatt data center, system is gonna require 223, I hate to say it, because it sounds insane, but 223 million liters of water in the system just to get the cooling requirements. That's the spin up the system. And then it runs through three million liters of consumed water every day.

Gaël Duez (00:32 )

Hello everyone, welcome to Green IO. I'm Gaël Duez and in this podcast, we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one byte at a time. Twice a month on a Tuesday, guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability. A month ago, Google released its 2024 Sustainability Report. Its overall water consumption increased by 28 % year on year. The good news is that location-wise water withdrawal and consumption data were made available. Water being even more difficult to transport than electricity, how aquifers are used by its different consumers impacts a lot the local communities. And data centers are not the last to consume water.

Ask our British friends, who recently discovered, thanks to a combined work from Foxglove and The Times, that 231 English data centres consume the equivalent per year of almost 4,000 Olympic swimming pools. But they also discovered that this figure is completely underestimated, because over half of British water companies have no clue how many data centres they supply, nor how much water they are hoovering up. I'm quoting here Donald Comble of Foxglove. To better understand this secret but serious love affair between Big Tech and Water, what better location to investigate than its birth place? Yes, the Silicon Valley. And no one there is better qualified to explore the topic than Masheika Allgood. Masheika has already lived several lives. As a lawyer, as a techie, For instance, her team at NVIDIA wrote the software managing AI training, and now as an activist. She recently made a big splash, pun intended, by creating a data center water consumption calculator based on public data and open hypothesis. So, welcome to the show, Masheika It's really an honor to have you with us today.

Masheika Allgood (02:50 )

I really appreciate you having me on. This is a really cool opportunity, so thank you.

Gael Duez (02:57 )

Well, I think we have, as I said in the introduction, I mean, you've lived several lives. I think I've got like half a hundred questions before once. And that might shock my usual listeners. I'd like to start right from the start with a provocative question playing a bit the devil advocate here. And no, I'm not going to turn into some clashes, stupid YouTuber, you know, to get more clicks and likes and what nots. But I would like to put this question on the table first, maybe to evacuate it fast. So you're someone who's deeply engaged. Again, the water consumption of data centers in the Bay Area, and we're going to develop this. But my question would be, do you consider yourself as a NIMBY, not in my backyard person, or actually that will be a very wrong way to describe what you're actually doing?

Masheika Allgood (04:00 )

So I don't think this should be in anyone's backyard. So I don't think it's gonna be so separate. Yeah, so I live in California. I live in the Bay Area, but I'm from Florida. And Florida is one of the wettest states in the US. So I grew up with rain as a regular feature in my life. And I moved to California at the tail end of 2014, which was in the midst of like a 10 year drought cycle.

Gael Duez (04:04 )

I was expecting this answer!

Masheika Allgood (04:30 )

So my first couple years here, it never rained, like at all. It was freaky. Like I had friends who were like recording the rain and like sending me clips and it was like, my God. Like I just, I missed rain. had never been anywhere that just didn't rain. And it just, it was a surreal experience. And when it started raining, I was like, ⁓ this is what that is. Wow, how cool, right? And so I didn't understand the concept of water scarcity because I came from a place where there's ocean there, there's lakes and the intercoastals, like a river on the inside. There's water everywhere. When you drive, you always see water. And I come to California and like there was no drops of water anywhere. You're always hearing drought. Everything was brown. My wife laughs because I thought they called it the Golden State because it was brown. Because when we drove everywhere, like all the grass was like golden. I thought that was it. I knew the real reason, but for some reason my brain supplanted it and she laughs to this day. But water scarcity is a real thing in the US and in California and specifically. We've had massive fires over the last couple of years, all up and down the West Coast. These horrific like looks like the world is ending kinds of landscapes from fires. So water is a real issue here. It's the states. And so people don't necessarily consider those things. But when I realized and when I learned that data centers take drinking water, it just, all of my alarm bells went off and it became a cause for me. You mentioned in your intro, you called me an activist.

Masheika Allgood (06:24 )

It's a term that I'm not fully comfortable with because I'm more of an educator of activists, right? Like I'm not all that great with people like those who like me, like me. I lead amongst, you kn