During a House Oversight Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ) questioned Tyson Slocum, the Energy Program Director at Public Citizen, about utilizing sustainable practices in building data centers.
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00:00Now I recognize the gentlelady from Arizona, Ms. Ansari, for five minutes.
00:06Thank you so much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our witnesses for being here today.
00:10My district in Arizona and the surrounding Phoenix metro area is one of the fastest-growing data center hubs in the country.
00:18By 2028, it is expected to be the nation's second-largest concentration of data centers,
00:22behind only Northern Virginia in Mr. Subramanyam's district.
00:26For our national security and economic prosperity, we absolutely need to be global leaders on the artificial intelligence front.
00:33To do that, we will need to keep building more data centers and the infrastructure to support them.
00:38But we also need to do that in a way that's smart, ensuring lasting resiliency in these systems and our energy and water future.
00:45Arizona Public Service, which is the largest power provider in my state,
00:49has projected that data centers will account for 55 percent of its power needs by 2031.
00:54So my first question, Mr. Levy, what are companies doing to lower their power usage going forward?
01:05Thank you, Representative Ansari.
01:07I very much appreciate the question, and we are certainly seeing a great deal of growth in Arizona,
01:11and it has been a great destination for data center employment.
01:14This is an industry that continues to innovate both on energy and water utilization.
01:21I think one of the main things to recognize is that data centers centralize what would otherwise be disparate computing resources,
01:29bring them together under a facility.
01:32In doing so, you see already, according to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab,
01:36about a 600 percent gain in energy efficiency over a disaggregated compute.
01:42That was based on research they did between 2010 and 2018.
01:47That continues.
01:49You're seeing a tremendous lean in on energy efficiency for a variety of reasons,
01:52but one of which is energy is a cost driver,
01:54and our members can pay anywhere from 40 to 60 percent for energy.
01:59Every electron is precious and is managed such.
02:02At the same time, one of the primary functions of a data center is to remove heat from servers that generate heat
02:09and ensure that those servers can continue to perform.
02:14When I went into my first data center facility in 2001,
02:19I had to wear a windbreaker because it was a cool environment, and notably so.
02:27Going into a data center now, you'll find some ambient temperatures in the 80s, maybe even higher,
02:33because the hardware has been able to withstand, based on innovations and design, increasingly high temperatures.
02:40I do want to just indicate there is a fundamental tradeoff right now in cooling technology
02:44between energy efficiency and water efficiency,
02:47and the data center industry does take a lot of thought as they are deploying infrastructure
02:53in locations to make sure that they're aware of the water availability,
02:57the energy availability, the tradeoffs in terms of how they're going to cool those servers.
03:02Thank you so much.
03:02Actually, in our last subcommittee hearing here, we discussed how to strengthen America's energy reliability.
03:08I do strongly believe that the greatest energy source is the energy that we don't use,
03:13and the best way to ensure energy reliability is to innovate,
03:16so that's good to hear that you feel it's moving in that direction.
03:19Mr. Slocum, question for you.
03:21Would you agree that the AI industry and data centers would be more cost-effective
03:25if they use less electricity and therefore spent less on their power bills?
03:30Of course.
03:30The question is, do they have the necessary incentives?
03:34When they're cutting sweetheart deals with a local utility,
03:38their focus is not on efficiency.
03:42It's on obtaining access to that transmission or generation infrastructure.
03:49And so I think it would be helpful to have guide rules from Congress
03:54about energy efficiency and demand response initiatives for the data center industry
04:00to ensure that we prioritize more efficient operations going forward.
04:05So in Arizona and much of the West, as I know that you know,
04:10the most critical resource that we have is water.
04:13And a recent study showed that a single data center can consume up to 5 million gallons of drinking water per day.
04:20That means they're not only straining and already limited resources in our state,
04:24but the result also means that water rates are going up for families.
04:27This question is also for you.
04:29What can the AI and data center industries do to use less water while also reducing their strain on the power grid?
04:36Right.
04:36Well, as we just heard Mr. Levy say that one of the big considerations for data center location is the availability of water.
04:44So I think, and out West, water resources are incredibly scarce and becoming more scarce,
04:50and it's a huge challenge.
04:51So what we need to do is to ensure that they are recycling or reusing water resources,
04:59that they are treating those water resources,
05:02that we're not dipping into aquifers or other drinking water resources
05:06just to keep large computer networks from overheating.
05:13And I just want to all wrap by saying, you know, I'm not anti-AI or anti-data center,
05:17but if we really do want to dominate this industry as a country, we need it to be future-proofed.
05:22We need to be innovating in the goals to make less energy and water intensive
05:27if we really want it to be sustainable.
05:29And I don't just mean sustainable in the climate sense,
05:31but sustainable is profitable and a continuously advancing industry.
05:35So thank you so much.
05:36I did want to ask for unanimous consent to enter the following articles into the records.
05:40That's okay, Mr. Chair.
05:42What are the names of the articles?
05:43First, a 2024 article from Business Insider titled,
05:47Google's Water Use is Soaring, AI is Only Going to Make It Worse.
05:512023 article...
05:52Without objection.
05:53Go ahead.
05:542023 article from the Washington Post titled,
05:57A New Front in the Water Wars, Your Internet Use.
06:00Without objection.
06:01And the third piece and a 2024 piece from the University of Tulsa titled,
06:05Data Centers Draining Resources in Water-Stressed Communities.
06:09Without objection.