In an unassuming building within an industrial park in central Mexico, vast rooms are filled with rows of servers adorned with blue lights, buzzing with activity and cooled by numerous small fans and large vents that blast air across the space.
“Datacentres are the lungs of digital life,” says Amet Novillo, managing director of Equinix Mexico, a digital infrastructure company, as he stands amidst the airflow that prevents the hardware from overheating.
Datacentres are increasingly clustering in Querétaro, where tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are making multibillion-dollar investments. Amazon alone has pledged $5 billion. The government promotes this industry as a new economic growth driver, but in a drought-prone state where the electrical grid experienced blackouts this summer, critics question how the strained infrastructure will supply the necessary water and energy.
Similar debates are occurring across Latin America, where datacentres are emerging to support the expanding digital world. Essentially, a datacentre is a warehouse filled with computers operating continuously. These servers require significant electricity and a combination of air and water for cooling.
“Datacentres process our digital lives,” explains Ana Valdivia, an AI expert at the Oxford Internet Institute. “This call is being processed in a datacentre; every email we receive goes through a datacentre.”
Querétaro has long been a hub for datacentres in Mexico, but this year, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have announced or launched new facilities there.
The Mexican Association of Data Centres estimates that upcoming projects will add 600 megawatts (MW) of installed capacity, compared to the current 160MW in Querétaro. However, Adriana Rivera, the association’s executive director, notes that this estimate is conservative, as many companies do not disclose their datacentre capacities.
This growth benefits Querétaro’s economy, spurring construction and creating a network of suppliers to maintain and upgrade the hardware. It also brings a limited number of well-paid jobs and positions the state as a high-tech hub.
“Querétaro is gaining global attention,” says Marco Del Prete, the state’s minister for sustainable development. “The economic benefits are tremendous.”
From the industry’s perspective, Querétaro offers safety and seismic stability near Mexico City. Del Prete denies that the state government has provided public land or fiscal incentives to attract datacentre providers.
However, datacentres primarily need reliable access to electricity and water, with water being a particularly contentious issue in Querétaro. The city’s growth and its industries, including car and aerospace manufacturing, have already strained its underground aquifers over the past two decades. In 2011, the state government completed Aqueduct II to transport water from rural northeastern Querétaro to the urban center, allowing the aquifers to recover.
Despite Aqueduct II’s construction to increase water supply, it is already insufficient during the dry season. The city’s continued growth, the arrival of more industries, and climate change have exacerbated the situation. This year’s drought was the worst of the century.
Aqueduct II is no longer adequate. Water shortages now affect parts of the city during the dry season, and the increasing industrial demands further deplete the aquifers.
Tensions peaked last year in Maconí, through which Aqueduct II passes. The drought has dried up springs that communities once relied on, forcing some to receive water by truck or donkey.
“Last year, we barely saw any rain, and this year, there hasn’t been a drop,” says Alejandro Ortiz, a community leader in Maconí, speaking in June. “This year has been the hottest I can remember.”
Local residents claim the state government broke its promise to provide their communities with piped water after securing their consent to build Aqueduct II. When they occupied the dam in protest, security forces removed them and arrested several, including Ortiz.
In October last year, the communities marched to Querétaro city and staged a sit-in at Plaza de Armas, resulting in a new agreement with the state government, including water provision. They vow to march again if the government fails to honor its commitment. “And this time, not to Querétaro, but to Mexico City,” Ortiz warns.
Following the removal of Maconí protestors from Aqueduct II, the state government acknowledged the communities’ water needs and claimed to be addressing them.
Mauricio Kuri, the state governor from the conservative PAN party, urged the opposition not to politicize the water issue and called for technical solutions, including building another aqueduct to bring water from Hidalgo.
However, the opposition accuses the state government of prioritizing industrial water needs over those of its citizens. Gilberto Herrera, a deputy from the Morena party, says: “Your hotel won’t lack water. If you want to play golf for a week, you can; it will all be green.”
Meanwhile, in rural areas, “you will see people washing with water that is neither clear nor clean,” says Herrera.
Kuri has accused Herrera and the opposition of spreading lies about the “privatization of water” in Querétaro to gain votes.
Querétaro’s growing datacentre sector is now adding a new dimension to this debate. Without public data, it’s challenging to estimate a datacentre’s water needs accurately, which depend on factors like its MW of installed capacity or the cooling technology it uses. On average, a 1MW datacentre with a typical water-based cooling system may use about 25 million liters of water annually.
Based on this estimate, 600MW of new datacentres in Querétaro would require 15 billion liters of water annually, roughly 13% of the metropolitan area’s water use. However, if the datacentre uses a closed-loop system, this water can be reused instead of being emitted as steam or discharged back into the water system.
Del Prete says most of Querétaro’s datacentres are moving towards using closed water systems. “There is water loss, but not at the levels some believe,” he says. “We don’t deny water is a factor: it is a necessity. But it’s not an impediment to setting up in Querétaro.”
Novillo states that Equinix’s datacentres are connected to the municipal water network but operate in a “100%” closed system, reusing the same water indefinitely. Additionally, he says, a datacentre’s water consumption is similar to any office building.
Amazon, Google, and Microsoft declined to answer specific questions about the electricity and water needs of their planned datacentres in Querétaro, instead referring to company-wide plans to reduce their energy and water use.
Microsoft did not respond to requests for an interview or comment.
A Google spokesperson claimed that its “Google Cloud region” in Querétaro supports the company’s broader goal of operating on 24/7 carbon-free energy in every grid where it operates and aligning with its global goal of 100% renewable energy consumption. The company has not commented on water consumption.
Google announced that its investments in Querétaro are projected to add $11.2 billion to Mexico’s GDP and generate over 117,000 jobs by 2030.
Amazon stated, “At AWS, we recognize the importance of water as a precious resource. We are committed to being water-positive by 2030, meaning we will return more water to communities than we use in our data center operations.” The company emphasized that it thoroughly examined local climate conditions and water resources before constructing its infrastructure. “In Querétaro, we carefully analyzed regional and local water availability before opting for an air-cooled data center design that does not require continuous use of cooling water.”
Independent experts note that while it is technically feasible for a data center to reuse the same water for cooling servers, this process demands more electricity to cool the water between uses, thereby increasing energy consumption. Air-cooling systems also tend to be more energy-intensive.
The challenge is that 77% of Mexico’s electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels in thermal power stations, which involves converting water into steam to drive turbines.
“There will be water consumption, and consequently, carbon emissions associated with it,” says David Mytton, a sustainable computing researcher at the University of Oxford. “They will inherit the carbon intensity of the local grid.”
Otto Van Geet, an engineer at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory, explains that public scrutiny of data centers has motivated companies to reduce on-site water use, even if it means increasing overall water use when considering off-site electricity generation.
In a hot, dry region like Querétaro, Van Geet suggests that the ideal solution would be to harness its abundant solar resources and for data centers to use closed-loop cooling systems that require less water but more electricity.
“Big solar, big batteries, 100% renewables, 100% of the time. Problem solved,” says Van Geet. “But that’s not the current state – that’s a future goal for the industry. When building a new data center, they should include enough solar capacity to run it.”
Mexico is still far from this vision. The outgoing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has prioritized the state oil company over investments in renewables. It remains uncertain whether his successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist and close ally of López Obrador, will shift this focus.
In Europe, new regulations will soon require data centers to report their electricity and water consumption. However, in Mexico, there is little public debate about the costs and benefits of hosting data centers. “We don’t know the numbers involved,” says Herrera.
Del Prete advocates for similar regulations in Mexico, not only for transparency but also for sustainability. “It’s crucial to know how much is being consumed to improve – that is, to reduce consumption.”
Source: The Guardian
