Data Center in Paris Uses Excess Heat to Heat Olympic Pool Amidst Criticism
On August 7th, it was reported that a data center located in Paris, France, has been connected to the local heating system to heat the swimming pool for the Paris Olympics. However, critics believe that these recycling projects that utilize the excess heat of data centers actually divert the public's attention from the true environmental cost of artificial intelligence.
In the northeastern suburb of Paris, there is a huge reddish-brown warehouse with a maze-like corridor without windows inside. A deafening buzzing sound comes from behind rows of gray doors. This is the latest data center in France, which was completed earlier this year and is now also used to heat the new Olympic swimming center. That is to say, the water of the Olympic swimming pool is heated by the heat generated by the data center.
The data center named PA10 belongs to the American data center company Equinix, and the buzzing sound comes from the company's cooling system that reduces the temperature of computer servers. Site data center engineer Imane Erraji pointed to a tower server that can train artificial intelligence and said, PA10 is specifically designed for high-density racks. In the past month, the data center has converted the generated hot exhaust gas into hot water and transported it through pipes to the local energy system operated by the French state-owned utility company Engie. In the case of full-load operation, Equinix expects that this data center will output 6.6 megawatts of energy, which is enough to supply more than 1,000 households.
Related predictions show that artificial intelligence will greatly increase the power required by data centers. Equinix predicts that the power consumption of each rack may increase by 400%. PA10 shows the local efforts to mitigate the impact of the artificial intelligence energy crisis on the environment and transform the data center into a part of the urban heating infrastructure.
Erraji described this project as a win-win for Equinix and the suburb of Seine-Saint-Denis. She explained that Equinix can discharge the heat out of the building through pipes, so that the operating power of the cooling equipment can be effectively reduced, and the city can obtain cheap local heat sources. This project received an investment of 2 million euros (about 2.1 million US dollars) from the city of Paris, and Equinix promised to provide free heat energy for 15 years. In June this year, Mathieu Hanotin, the mayor of Seine-Saint-Denis, also emphasized the environmental benefits of the data center, claiming that using the data center as a heat source will reduce the local carbon dioxide emissions by 1,800 tons per year.
However, according to the data of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the French power structure has a本来就很低 carbon emissions, and 62% of the power comes from nuclear power. Critics say that more and more heat recovery projects have diverted people's attention from the real problem of the consumption of land, water and power by data centers. Anne-Laure Ligozat, a professor of computer science at the French National Institute of Industrial and Commercial Computer Science (ENSIIE), said, When the data center already exists, recycling this heat is better than doing nothing. But the problem lies in the number and energy consumption of data centers. She added that if there is no data center, a simple electric heating system will have less impact on the environment.
Simon Hinterholzer, a researcher at the Borderstep Institute for Innovation and Sustainability in Germany, said that recently the data center is facing incr easing pressure to help the EU achieve ambitious environmental goals, such as reducing emissions by 55% by 2030. Therefore, projects that recycle heat energy to heat homes, offices or universities have sprung up like mushrooms throughout the region. In the past two years, as European energy prices soared, local governments looked everywhere for cheap heat sources, and these projects became more popular.
Researchers all believe that once the data center is built, these heat recovery projects still make sense. Shaolei Ren, an associate professor at the University of California, Riverside, who studies sustainable computing, said, There is a significant difference. He estimates that cooling technology may account for 50% of the total energy consumption of the data center. If companies can reuse this heat, it is actually a significant reduction in the energy required for cooling.
However, in order to promote the benefits of heat recovery projects, the power source of the data center must be carefully examined. Equinix said that the energy demand of PA10 is 100% covered by renewable energy, including the use of power purchase agreements (PPA), that is, the technology company pays for the equivalent power produced by wind or solar power plants, but this power is not necessarily directly used in the data center.
There is currently no data center that operates entirely on renewable energy, Shaolei Ren said. When technology companies claim that their data centers use renewable energy or are carbon neutral, they mean carbon offsets, which means they connect the data center to the power grid and take some offsetting methods elsewhere. For example, companies that rely on power purchase agreements do not always buy renewable energy from the country where the data center is located.
In the past nine days, the cheering of the Olympic swimming stadium may have drowned out the buzzing of the nearby Equinix data center. But in Paris and other regions of Europe, people still have doubts about this booming industry and the disruption that artificial intelligence will bring. According to Ligozat's opinion, the main problem is the debate about whether to continue building data centers and their uses. For me, the main problem is whether we should continue to build data centers? she said, Rather than whether we should recycle the generated heat.