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When it comes to reducing water and energy footprints, many organizations see only obstacles. At Ecolab, we see only opportunities.

The AI revolution has increased energy and cooling demand on an unprecedented scale. This is driving a migration in data center cooling architectures to mitigate the heat generated by today’ s advancedcomputing applications and chips.

To put demand into perspective, a typical query answered by a leading generative AI system requires 2.9 watt-hours( Wh) of electricity, or roughly 10 times the amount of electricity consumed for the standard search engine query. When multiplied across millions of daily queries, this consumption grows substantially.

To stay competitive now and in the future, data center providers must invest in state-of-the-art cooling infrastructures and digital monitoring that allows them to conserve resources, optimize performance, and quickly adapt to changes in demand.

Energy requires water

Today, power is the number-one source limiting data-center growth. Depending on geography and computing demand, increased water requirements can also strain local watersheds. Conserving power and water is paramount for data centers to gain a competitive edge and improve operational efficiency.

Current forecasts indicate that computing infrastructure for advanced large-language models could, by 2030, require 327 gigawatts( GW) of electricity to keep up with demand. That’ s approximately 70 % of the total electricity used in the United States in 2024.

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