Impact of Water Usage on Data Center Costs and Sustainability

Today, the drive for sustainable operations not only means reducing carbon emissions, but also conserving water — objectives that can appear in conflict as data center operators turn to thermal management systems that use water to reduce energy consumption and thus carbon emissions.

Being the most dominant greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming through an amplifying effect, water clearly comes with both environmental and operating costs that need to be fully considered early in the cooling system design process.

While the argument can be made that the overall conservation of energy facilitates water conservation (because most sources of electricity consume water in the power generation process), this is typically not the case. Read the full paper to understand why and learn more about today’s technologies that can help you simultaneously balance power usage effectiveness (PUE) with water usage effectiveness (WUE).

Download the white paper