Microsoft, Google confront data centre fears as backlash grows

Microsoft is focused on initiatives such as making sure data centre-related costs are “ring-fenced,” supporting workers and focusing on water efficiency, Melanie Nakagawa said. Photo by Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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They sought to ease the concerns by discussing steps they’re taking to shield consumers from the cost of new facilities, backing the workforce and highlighting efforts related to water usage.

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The questions “we’re hearing communities asking are really important,” said Melanie Nakagawa, Microsoft’s chief sustainability officer, speaking Wednesday at a Bloomberg Green event in New York. It’s led to discussions about “what communities should expect when it comes to electricity.”

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Amanda Peterson Corio, global head of data-centre energy at Alphabet’s Google, said one of the biggest obstacles facing data centres is they’re “politically hated on the left and the right, and we’re going into elections, and a lot more money is going to be spent.”

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The resistance is already disrupting projects. Roughly 45 developments worth US$68 billion were blocked or delayed by local pushback in the second quarter of this year, according to a report from research group Data Center Watch. Thirty statehouses also introduced measures addressing issues such as data-centre siting, electricity and water, with many adopting them.

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Microsoft, Google and Amazon.com Inc., along with Meta Platforms Inc., are leading developers and consumers of data-centre capacity.

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Microsoft is focused on initiatives such as making sure data centre-related costs are “ring-fenced,” supporting workers and focusing on water efficiency, Nakagawa said.

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“It is so critical right now, particularly in America, that we are investing in the workforce,” she said.

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As for water, “one of the things we wanted to be was really transparent,” Nakagawa said. “So earlier this year in our sustainability report, we actually released the data of what is the water usage out of our data centre campuses.”

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Water shortages have emerged as a prime concern amid the boom in data-centre construction.

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Kara Hurst, Amazon’s chief sustainability officer, said that 90 per cent of the time the company isn’t using water to cool its data centres.

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“That’s an important statistic because there’s a lot of misinformation out there about water,” she said.

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Hurst also called for renewed attention to grid stability, saying that requires sound policies to spur investment. That should include clean energy such as wind, solar and nuclear power, she said Wednesday at the Bloomberg event.

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“The best thing we can do to make sure we recognize all this economic benefit is all work together to help change the political narrative on this and unlock the bottleneck because the upside is huge,” Google’s Corio said Tuesday during a presentation at the Dynamo Energy Transition Summit in New York.

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At a climate event on Tuesday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said the concerns about data centres are appropriate, citing not only their enormous electricity demand but also water use, noise and zoning issues. But he stopped short of calling for a ban.