Will Water Crisis Be a Hurdle in India’s Data Centre Dream?
Bengaluru, India’s Silicon Valley, is grappling with an acute water shortage, with a daily deficit of 500 million litres. This has left experts scratching their heads over its implications on the water-guzzling data centres that power the city’s digital infrastructure. The IT hub has over 16 operational data centres, with 205.64 MW capacity, run by 9 major providers, including CtrlS, NTT, STT Telemedia, Sify, and Iron Mountain. These facilities, housing servers and computing infrastructure for cloud services, AI, banking, e-commerce, and more, require enormous amounts of water for cooling purposes. Data centres consume 26 million litres per MW annually, resulting in a staggering 1.4 crore litres of daily water usage—equivalent to nearly 41,900 households in Bengaluru alone. However, according to a Niti Aayog report, Bangalore is not the only prime data centre epicentre affected; Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi, and Chennai are also facing an increasing crisis. Since India’s installed data centre capacity is projected to increase four times, from 499 MW in 2021 to 2.01 thousand MW in 2024, and is expected to reach 4.77 thousand MW by 2029, the pre-existing water scarcity has raised concerns over the sustainability of India and Bengaluru’s digital ambitions. Technological Move Towards Sustainability While the government has released a draft ‘National Data Centre Policy‘ to bolster India’s installed data centre capacity—these policies overlook a crucial issue: the environmental impact of data centres, particularly their water usage. Data centres consume water directly for cooling and indirectly through non-renewable electricity generation, exacerbating water scarcity concerns. Experts warn that without urgently adopting sustainable practices like waterless cooling technologies, greater renewable energy adoption and stricter regulation, the water crisis could force data centres to relocate from Bengaluru, jeopardising the digital ecosystem. To address this issue, companies like Google and Microsoft have adopted recycled wastewater for cooling, However, many data centres still rely on fresh municipal water supply. AWS CEO Adam Selipsky has also emphasised the urgency of the situation, stating, “In just a few years, half of the world’s population is projected to live in water-stressed areas, so to ensure all people have access to water, we all need to innovate new ways to help conserve and reuse this precious resource.” Additionally, some players are rapidly adopting innovative cooling solutions to slash water usage as the sector grapples with rising temperatures and water scarcity challenges. For instance, Bengaluru-based CtrlS aims to use 100% recycled water across all its facilities, while NTT targets 99% waste recycling by 2030 and increasing recycled wastewater usage. Iron Mountain’s data centres run entirely on renewable energy purchased via green credits. They are opting for methods like liquid immersion cooling, direct chip cooling, and closed-loop dielectric cooling, which are also being developed to save water. “Water is becoming an increasingly precious resource, especially in regions facing drought conditions,” said Piyush Somani, CEO of ESDS Software Solution, a managed cloud service provider that delivers the best-in-class data centre and managed services. “Adopting liquid cooling is vital for ensuring the long-term sustainability of our data centres,” Somani added. Liquid immersion cooling fully submerges servers in a specialised fluid, transferring heat more efficiently than air and using minimal water to cool the fluid. Meanwhile, direct liquid cooling circulates coolant directly onto processor chips, eliminating the need for energy-intensive air-conditioning systems. Beyond water savings, these technologies also boost energy efficiency by 10-50%, slashing operating costs and carbon emissions for data centre operators. Moving Towards Waterless Data Centres Moreover, as traditional air-based cooling methods have reached limitations, companies are now turning to direct-to-chip liquid cooling for its superior heat transfer capabilities. It has also prompted the adoption of waterless, two-phase solutions like ZutaCore’s HyperCool, which is being used by AMD, Dell, and data centre giants like Equinix. HyperCool offers significant benefits for high-performance computing, server densification, and data centre sustainability, tailored to modern cloud, AI, and HPC workloads. Direct-to-chip liquid cooling facilitates sustainability in data centres by reducing space and construction, extending server lifetime, reducing cooling power consumption, maximising heat reuse, and reducing the environmental impact. With its dielectric liquid cooling solution, ZutaCore addresses the rising challenges of escalating heat densities exceeding 100KW in data centres as heavy GPU racks become part of Indian data centres like Yotta. This technology significantly improves cooling efficiency, enhances equipment performance, and yields substantial operator cost savings. So much so that Vijay Sampathkumar, country manager at Zutacore, explained, “We use zero water… and this technology can ‘decimate 92% of GPU heat’ and ‘70% of CPU heat’ without water.” Integrated with AI-powered optimisation algorithms, ZutaCore’s solution reduces energy usage by 30%, ensuring precise cooling resource allocation without compromising performance or reliability. Through AI-driven simulations and predictive analytics, the company collaborates with industry partners to develop tailored liquid cooling solutions that anticipate and adapt to future requirements. Additionally, Evolution Data Centres are addressing the issue in developing countries facing water scarcity, like those in Southeast Asia using their air-cooled chillers—replacing traditional water-cooled systems that require around 50,000 litres of water per day per MW. “These air-cooled chillers require no water during normal operation, which helps to achieve virtually zero Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE),” emphasised Simon Hamer, CTO at Evolution. Meanwhile, hyperscalers such as Meta are also venturing into the Indian market to tap into the burgeoning demand. While Meta is collaborating with Reliance to utilise their co-location units, adding to the demand for such infrastructures, it is also consequently straining the available resources.
Since India’s data centre capacity is set to increase 4x to 2.01 thousand MW in 2024, water scarcity has raised concerns over its sustainability.
Since India's data centre capacity is set to increase 4x to 2.01 thousand MW in 2024, water scarcity has raised concerns over its sustainability.
["Data Center"]
["Go", "API", "Data Center", "AWS", "AI", "R", "Scala", "Git", "Aim", "analytics", "predictive analytics"]
["AI", "analytics", "Aim", "predictive analytics", "AWS", "R", "Go", "Scala", "Git", "API"]
Shyam is a tech journalist with expertise in policy and politics, and exhibits a fervent interest in scrutinising the convergence of AI and analytics in society. In his leisure time, he indulges in anime binges and mountain hikes.