“The crux of the controversy in the Google case,” wrote the advocacy group Mouvement Écologique  (FR) from 2021, “is its use of water for the necessary cooling of the facilities.”

The statement continues: “As no official data has been published, speculation on this subject is rife. It is said that water consumption is very considerable and could represent 5% to 10% of the national drinking water supply. These figures have never been refuted by official sources or by Google. As a result, no one denies that Google needs significant quantities of water for its cooling.” The environmental organisation estimated a quantity of 7,500m3 per day.

As the statement acknowledges, nobody outside Google really knows the details: companies often consider data relating to electricity or water consumption to be strategic.

However, having already provided data on its electricity consumption, Google published its environmental report earlier this week, which includes the first water-related numbers. To a great extent this is obviously a marketing exercise, both in form and content, but there is good data if you dig deep into the report’s appendix.

What follows are nine questions whose answers we found in the report, with the idea of providing perspective on the issue at hand: building a huge data centre in a Luxembourg village.

1. What is Google’s annual electricity consumption?

21.78 million MWh, according to the graphs on page 91 of the report. While this figure may “float” a little, comparing it with Luxembourg’s total annual consumption of 6.38 million MWh (according to the Luxembourg Regulatory Institute) puts it into context.

It is also possible to split the companies consumption into two parts: 15.5 million MWh in the United States and 6.27 million MWh in the rest of the world. In other words, yearly, Google consumes as much electricity outside the US as the whole of Luxembourg does domestically.

2. What’s the trend in annual consumption?

10.1 million MWh in 2018 versus 21.78 million today is easy maths: Google’s consumption has doubled. Frightening? Not necessarily: part of the uptick is linked to general and administrative activities, which have naturally grown alongside the growth of the company. Also telling: the number of data centres has gone from 14 in 2018 to 25 today. Another performance criterion is power usage effectiveness (PUE): put simply, a lower PUE means that the data centre needs less electricity. The average for Google’s data centres in 2022 was 1.1, compared with 1.55 for the rest of the industry, according to the tech giant.

3. Is it true that Google only uses green electricity?

According to the report, yes. “We’ve matched 100% of our global electricity use with renewable energy purchases for the last six years--a goal that seemed almost crazy when we set it in 2012,” enthuses Google’s SVP of learning and sustainability, Benedict Gomes. But the 21.78 million MWh come in different forms. Most of it comes from purchases of green electricity on the market (16.7 million MWh), followed by use of the grid when the electricity fed into it is green (5 million MWh). Just 0.0096 million MWh, or 0.044%, come via onsite production.

4. Where does this electricity come from?

Google obtained the right to directly buy electricity from the US regulator in 2010, when it signed its first (20-year) contract with a wind farm in Iowa (providing 114 MW). By 2022, the group had signed 20 contracts for 2.8 GW of green energy capacity, bringing the total to 10 GW. The group is expected to spend around $10bn between now and 2040 to continue increasing this capacity. Since 2020 Google has also had a zero-carbon energy strategy, based on artificial intelligence, which is supposed to help create some 12,000 jobs by 2025.

5. Is it really necessary to use water to cool data centres?

Yes, says Google, which estimates that data centres cooled with water now use 10% less electricity and emit 10% less carbon. But engineers are, obviously, still on cheaper and more efficient alternatives.

6. What is Google’s annual water consumption?

The answer isn’t exactly hidden, but finding it nevertheless requires the most effort. Drumroll, please: 5.6 billion gallons. In litres, that’s 21.2 billion. According to a 2019 study by the environmental administration (AEV), 132,000m3 of water are available every day in Luxembourg, or 48 billion litres a year. And in reality, Google has actually “pumped” 7.6 billion gallons and “returned” two billion.

7. Is this water lost to the community?

Since 2021 Google has had a new, two-pronged policy. In prong one, the tech giant commits to recycling the water it uses: today, it makes 6% of the water it uses drinkable (whether upstream or not) and the figure is set to rise to 120% by 2030. In prong two, it has committed to several initiatives, including direct investment in eco-technologies.

Some of these initiatives: in Eemshaven (Netherlands) and Saint-Ghislain (Belgium), Google uses contaminated industrial water via a pipeline and a canal; in Hamina (Finland), it takes seawater and returns it to its original temperature before putting it back into the sea; and in Douglas County (United States), it has financed a water treatment plant used partly by the company and partly by the county.

8. Any figures closer to home? More telling? And for data centres?

Yes. In Saint-Ghislain (Belgium), 220km from Bissen, Google used 1.447 million litres of water in 2022, including 53,700 litres of drinking water, and returned 446,678 litres of clean water, representing consumption of 1 million litres.

In Eemshaven (Netherlands), 500km from Bissen, Google used 1.27 million litres of water in 2022, including 7,570 litres of drinking water, and returned 416,016 litres, equivalent to a consumption of 858,531 litres.

In both cases, Google points out, this is equivalent to watering almost two North American golf courses for a year.

9. Why is Google investing so much?

In 2020, the group carried out a climate risk assessment covering 26 office sites and 23 data centre locations. Since last year, it has even developed a methodology for quantifying the water risk for its data centres. Not to mention the obligation on its suppliers to be transparent about their use of water in their dealings with the giant.

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This article in French in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.