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Internet giant Google has released its latest environmental report ahead of next week’s groundbreaking for two major projects it plans to build in Dorchester County, and the latest update shows mixed results for the company and its existing site near Moncks Corner.
The company’s Berkeley County data center off U.S. Highway 52 maintained its energy efficiency score in 2023 with a “power usage effectiveness” ratio of 1.10 — the same as the previous two years and down from 1.11 in 2020.
That means for every watt of electricity used for computing purposes, a little more than an additional one-tenth of a watt is needed to cool and distribute power to the equipment. A score of 1.0 is considered ideal.
As for its water needs, the data center’s consumption jumped 15 percent last year from 2022 to 763.4 million gallons, for a daily average of more than 2 million gallons.
One measure the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary uses is to compare its water usage to the amount needed to irrigate a typical 18-hole golf course in the Southwestern U.S. The Berkeley County data center, which opened in 2007, used as much water as 5.1 courses last year. Among the 29 sites that Google publicly reports numbers on, that’s the third- highest.
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All told, the environmental report shows the Mountain View, Calif.-based company is making progress on its water replenishment program, using more fresh water or reclaimed wastewater to cool its computer servers at data centers around the globe.
“Our water stewardship projects replenished an estimated 1 billion gallons of water, which represents 18 percent of our 2023 freshwater consumption and tripled our replenishment progress of 6 percent in 2022,” Kate Brandt, chief sustainability officer, and Ben Gomes, senior vice president of learning and sustainability, said in a blog post.
“We strive to build the world’s most energy-efficient computing infrastructure, supported by responsible water use practices and a commitment to minimizing waste,” Brandt and Gomes stated.
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Critics say the report downplays the impact that artificial intelligence technology will have on electricity usage Google’s data centers consume.
The company said predicting the future environmental impact of AI is “complex and evolving, and our historical trends likely don’t fully capture AI’s future trajectory.”
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Devin Coldewey, writing for the TechCrunch website, said that “is the kind of language used when someone knows something but would really, really prefer not to tell you.”
“I have no doubt there are a lot of great green efforts going on at Google … but it’s important to highlight what it seemingly refuses to: the enormous and growing energy cost of AI systems,” Coldewey wrote. “Google has every incentive to downplay and obfuscate these figures, which even in its reduced, highly efficient state, can hardly be good.”
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Google is also falling behind in its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2030. Emissions of climate-changing gases increased 13 percent in 2023 and are up 48 percent since the baseline year of 2019, driven by the demand AI puts on data centers.
“Reaching this net zero goal by 2030, this is an extremely ambitious goal,” Brandt told the Associated Press. “We know this is not going to be easy and that our approach will need to continue to evolve, and it will require us to navigate a lot of uncertainty, including this uncertainty around the future of AI’s environmental impacts.”
Google hasn’t disclosed the projected water or electricity usage at the two data centers it’s planning to build in Dorchester County — one at the Pine Hill Business Campus off U.S. Highway 17A near Summerville and the other along U.S. Highway 78 near St. George. Google says its utility agreements for those sites are protected trade secrets.
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A groundbreaking for the projects is scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday.
Regulatory filings show the Pine Hill data center is farther down the path toward construction. Plans submitted to the S.C. Department of Environmental Services show it will include two separate buildings with equipment next to a large stormwater retention pond and an electrical substation.
Google filed for a permit in March that will allow it to clear timber and install erosion controls on the site near St. George.
Dorchester County Council last year approved historic tax breaks to land the company, including a reduction in the property taxes to a fixed rate of 4 percent of the assessed value of any land and buildings the company owns and occupies for up to 53 years. The county also agreed to refund all of the taxes Google pays on personal property, such as vehicles.
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