Image by Stephen Phillips / Unsplash
As part of a larger effort to reduce the UK’s water consumption, the government has drawn attention to the enormous demands on utilities caused by growing data storage – the Environment Agency has advised the UK public to delete old emails in a bid to save on water consumption.
The advice was part of a list of more conventional suggestions, which also included fixing leaking toilets, turning off taps while brushing your teeth, and taking shorter showers. This year has seen the driest six months to July since 1976 in the UK and according to the National Drought Group, which includes the Met Office, government, regulators, and water companies, the UK’s water shortage is now a “nationally significant incident.”
According to an Oxford University study, a relatively small 1 megawatt data centre uses about 26 million litres of water per year. However, the advice did draw backlash as according to some calculations, storing an email for a month would use approximately one-thousandth of a millilitre of water, whereas the act of rooting out old emails and photos to delete them will use more energy than simply leaving them in a spun-down state.
Government continues promoting AI
Additionally, the government has been criticised for its hypocritical stance as it continues to promote the use of AI, despite its much larger water consumption footprint. Writing one 100-word email with GPT-4 uses approximately 519 millilitres of water, slightly more than one 16.9-ounce bottle. ChatGPT is on track to reach 700 million weekly active users and sits firmly at the top of the App Store and Google Play charts. Yet the government continues promoting AI use in its AI Opportunities Action Plan, which has been accompanied by partnerships with OpenAI and NVIDIA, supercomputer construction, and deployment of AI tools within the public sector. The largest data centre in Europe will be built in Hertfordshire.
The National Drought Group says requests to residents to save water have made a difference. Water demand dropped by 20 percent from a July 11th peak in the Severn Trent area after “water-saving messaging,” according to the release.
The Environment Agency did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Verge about how much water it thought deleting files might save, nor how much water data centres that store files or train AI use in the UK’s drought-affected areas.