DESIGN & BUILD
As global data consumption surges on account of rising AI workloads, data centres are facing a sustainability dilemma like never before. The main concern? Water.
Traditional cooling methods consume significant amounts of water and, with energy demand skyrocketing and putting pressure on essential systems, the sustainability of the industry continues to be called into question.
One solution to balance efficiency, innovation and environmental responsibility could lie in circular economy principles, a model that involves reusing and recycling existing materials and products for as long as possible. Park Place Technologies is one company that is advocating for the circular economy within the data centre industry, as it could help data centres slash energy costs, reduce overall water consumption and future-proof operations to better meet continued compute demands.
With this in mind, Park Place Technologies CTO Chris Carreiro shares his insights on how closed-loop systems and adopting circular economy principles can better support data centres and work to not only reduce water consumption, but also overall operations costs.
Embracing a closed-loop system Data centres are now well-known for their water consumption, with a one megawatt data centre having the potential to use up to 25.5 million litres of water per year just for cooling. Likewise, the average data centre uses 300,000 gallons of water a day to keep cool, which is the equivalent of water use in 100,000 homes.
“ This is unsustainable, especially when considering how today’ s computational demands and AI workloads are skyrocketing,” Chris explains.
The closed-loop environment is a self-contained ecosystem for cooling that draws on an immersion liquid cooling system instead of fresh water
“ With greater investment in monitoring tools, organisations can reinforce efforts to introduce circular water practices and get ahead of potential bottlenecks”
CHRIS CARREIRO, CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, PARK PLACE TECHNOLOGIES
106 August 2025