Be taught extra about how we’re making progress in the direction of our sustainability commitments by means of the Sustainable by design weblog collection, beginning with Sustainable by design: Advancing the sustainability of AI.
Final month, we unveiled our Datacenter Group Pledge, emphasizing that datacenters aren’t solely the spine of contemporary expertise but in addition a drive for good within the communities they serve. As a part of this dedication, at Microsoft we acknowledge our essential position in defending and replenishing freshwater assets each within the areas the place we function and world wide.
That’s why in our datacenter operations, one of many important engineering questions we ask every day is: how can we proceed to preserve water whereas assembly rising buyer demand for cloud and AI innovation?
In datacenters, water is primarily used for cooling and humidification. As demand for prime efficiency cloud and AI purposes has grown over the previous few years to gasoline buyer purposes and allow a brand new frontier of discovery and innovation, so have the facility necessities for silicon chips—the essential constructing blocks of cloud and AI computing—that sit inside the racks and servers of datacenters. As a result of superior chips usually make the most of extra energy, additionally they generate extra warmth. To forestall the chips from malfunctioning, extra intensive cooling is required, and this has traditionally required consuming water.
To scale back the water required for operations, a essential path to our firm aim of turning into water constructive by 2030, we’re innovating all over the place from our datacenter buildings all the best way to the chips. Collectively, this work is delivering substantial outcomes. From our first era of owned datacenters within the early 2000s to our present era in 2023, we now have diminished our water depth (water consumed per kilowatt-hour) by over 80%. This exhibits that it’s potential to considerably scale back how a lot water our datacenters use per kilowatt of energy at the same time as our cloud infrastructure expands.
Right now, we’re sharing extra about two focus areas for persevering with to drive down water depth: (1) conserving water at each stage of operations, and (2) revolutionary applied sciences that scale back the quantity of water wanted for cooling.
Conserving water at each stage of operations
In any respect areas, we work to reduce the quantity of water we require for cooling. This contains working our datacenters at a temperature that permits us to chill with outside air the vast majority of the 12 months, lowering the necessity for ambient cooling, and conserving water at each stage of day-to-day operations.
We conduct common audits of our datacenters to determine inefficiencies and areas the place design and day-to-day use don’t align. Our 2022 audit resulted in focused enhancements that eradicated 90% of the cases during which extra water was used. As well as, we’re constructing superior prediction fashions that assist us anticipate water necessities primarily based on real-time climate and operational information. Evaluating anticipated must precise consumption patterns permits us to shortly determine inefficiencies, resembling water leaks which will in any other case go unnoticed.
To attenuate freshwater necessities from municipal water methods, we make use of conservation methods which can be tailor-made to the bioregion of the datacenters. For instance, in Texas, Washington, California, and Singapore we’ve expanded our use of reclaimed and recycled water. Within the Netherlands, Eire, and Sweden we’re harvesting rainwater, and we’re additionally bringing this functionality to new datacenters in Canada, the UK, Finland, Italy, South Africa, and Austria.
Progressive applied sciences that scale back the water wanted for cooling
Progressive cooling applied sciences are important to Microsoft’s water technique, and we’re quickly increasing confirmed options throughout our datacenter portfolio. This contains options that carry cooling on to the supply of warmth era—the chip itself.
Chilly plates are a major instance of this: a direct-to-chip cooling expertise that gives warmth alternate in a closed loop system. Chilly plates dissipate warmth extra successfully than conventional air cooling, immediately chilling the silicon after which recirculating the cooling fluid, like a automobile radiator. This resolution considerably improves cooling effectivity and permits extra exact temperature management in comparison with conventional strategies.
To harness the elevated effectivity chilly plates provide, we’re growing a brand new era of datacenter designs optimized for direct-to-chip cooling, which requires reinventing the structure of servers and racks to accommodate new strategies of thermal administration in addition to energy administration. In present datacenters, we’re additionally utilizing improvements just like the ‘sidekick,’ a liquid cooling system we’re already utilizing adjoining to racks of Microsoft Azure Maia AI Accelerator chips, circulating fluid to attract warmth away from the chilly plates connected to the floor of the chips.
We’re additionally evolving chilly plate applied sciences by means of our work with microfluidics, a expertise that brings cooling contained in the silicon by integrating tiny fluid channels into chip designs. Embedding the liquid cooling contained in the chip brings the coolant proper subsequent to the processors, leading to much more effectivity and precision.
Our latest datacenter designs are optimized to help AI workloads and eat zero water for cooling. To attain this, we’re transitioning to chip-level cooling options, offering exact temperature cooling solely the place it’s wanted and with out requiring evaporation. With these improvements, we will considerably scale back water consumption whereas supporting larger rack capability, enabling extra compute energy per sq. foot inside our datacenters.
Lowering world water use by means of partnership, investing to replenish water
Our water constructive aim guides us to think about not solely how we will shift our enterprise practices to cut back our water footprint but in addition how this work can profit prospects and companions working towards related targets. The 5 pillars of water constructive: discount, replenishment, entry, innovation, and coverage all play vital roles in our water constructive journey.
Over the previous 12 months, we grew our water replenishment program considerably, practically doubling our water replenishment portfolio to incorporate greater than 49 replenishment initiatives world wide. Collectively, these have the potential to replenish greater than 24,000 Olympic dimension swimming swimming pools over the lifetime of the initiatives. We additionally met our 2030 water entry goal to offer 1.5 million individuals with entry to wash water and sanitation providers.2
As well as, we’re working to cut back world water use by collaborating with prospects, companions, native communities and municipalities to advance water infrastructure and coverage across the globe. As a result of company approaches to water administration usually lag investments in carbon discount1, we’re taking an energetic position in championing efficient and revolutionary water administration practices and water insurance policies. A few of our advocacy initiatives embrace: (1) serving on a coalition to extend water reuse and recycling throughout the USA, (2) funding initiatives that help Tribal Nations and state governments in rising water safety, and (3) supporting analysis, evaluation, and advocacy on water within the European Fee.
Be taught extra about how Microsoft is advancing sustainability
Be taught extra about how we’re advancing sustainability by means of our Sustainable by design weblog collection, beginning with Sustainable by design: Advancing the sustainability of AI. For extra info on our progress in the direction of our sustainability targets, learn the Microsoft 2024 Environmental Sustainability Report.
1Why funding in water is essential to tackling the local weather disaster, World Financial Discussion board, 2024.
22024 Environmental Sustainability Report, Microsoft.