In France, data centers consume as much water as a city like Roubaix

Could the rise of artificial intelligence threw France? In The latest edition of its sustainable digital reportthe Telecoms Regulatory Authority (ARCEP) is closely interested in the carbon impact of data centers and in particular their water consumption.

Very unequally distributed in the territory, these infrastructure at the heart of our digital lives “raises major challenges in terms of regional planning, land management and availability of water and electricity resources“Note the independent authority.

A carbon footprint equivalent to 1.6 million smartphones

With new powers allowing it to question operators from data centers, ARCEP has therefore drawn a factual and complete assessment of the ecological pressure generated by these machines, widely used today to run large models of artificial intelligence, such as Chatgpt,, Gemini Or The cat.

As a result, between 2021 and 2023, the consumption of electricity and water in this sector increased by 8 % and 19 % respectively. In all, the environmental imprint of these structures therefore increased by 11 % over the same period to be at 137,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. The equivalent of the carbon footprint of 1.6 million smartphones. This record follows another, since in 2022, the same sector had seen its carbon footprint swell by 9 %.

This increase in the carbon footprint of Datacenters is due to “A real boom“Different projects in recent years with”Large centers“And ever more important electricity requests.

Conflicts of use to be expected?

But more than electricity and carbon, it is the increase in water consumption that alerts Arcep. Authority considers the question as essential “In a context where the availability of the resource is increasingly limited by human facilities and climate change“.

To cool (sample “direct“), the hexagonal data centers took 681,000 cubic meters of water, in”almost all“Drinking. The equivalent of more than 250 Olympic pools. By adding the water used to generate the electricity necessary for their operation (indirect sample), these structures have one”Water footprint“6 million cubic meters, the annual equivalent of water consumption in the city of Roubaix.

If the arcep notes that the volume of water directly taken “remains modest compared to other uses (industrial, agricultural)“, she still explains that this thirst of servers could generate”user conflicts in localities where the centers are located“. Say otherwise, it is less a question of volume than distribution.

The previous Taiwanese

And on this, France seems to go straight into the wall. Indeed, 70 % of data centers open in 2020 and 2023 are concentrated in Île-de-France. Taking into account all the tricolor servers farms, it is almost 60 % of the centers that are located in the region. And unfortunately, datacenters and humans drink more during the hot months. “”It is precisely during these periods of heat, when water becomes a critical resource, that the water needs of the data centers are the most important“Explains authority.

By piling up the majority of French servers around Paris, the risk is to create a situation where it will be necessary to decide where the water available during the drought periods will go. A situation that recalls that of Taiwan Who had, in 2021, to choose between cooling his semiconductor factories or watering his farms. A battle won by the first of the two industries.

Nevertheless, everything is not black, according to Arcep. Noting that data centers dedicated to artificial intelligence are “less dependent on communication times“, it would be possible to distribute the latter more equitably in the territory and avoid too large water stress situations. It remains to be seen whether large digital companies will listen to the advice of authority.