As Microsoft continues to peddle the use of artificially intelligent-led technologies a new zero-water cooling system in its data centers could have a major impact on the company’s carbon footprint.
Microsoft recently talked about its plan to integrate new zero water cooling systems into its data centers that have been constructed after August 2024 and going forward. Microsoft’s magical zero-water cooling technology makes use of a closed loop recycling process that circulates water simultaneously between servers and chillers which allows the datacenter to leverage the same single water source rather than siphoning in fresh water to keep things continuously cool.
Traditionally, data centers leverage cooling systems that include an evaporation of water because of tossing fresh cool water on servers. However, Microsoft’s zero-water cooling method will attempt to keep water and servers in harmonious balance of cool as water is continuously shifted into chillers before it evaporated and then tossed onto servers when frosty enough to cool them off again.
While the naming convention may feel like a misnomer, after initial construction of the datacenter, Microsoft will have a net zero water consumption profile for each of the servers going forward, and as a result, return millions of would be wasted back to the environment.
We have been working since the early 2000s to reduce water use and improved our WUE by 80% since our first generation of data centers. As water challenges grow more extreme, we know we have more work to do. The shift to the next generation data centers is expected to help reduce our WUE to near zero for each datacenter employing zero-water evaporation. As our fleet expands over time, this shift will help reduce Microsoft’s fleetwide WUE even further.
Steve Solomon, Vice President, Datacenter Infrastructure Engineering, Microsoft
After each datacenter is retrofitted or constructed with the new cooling system, Microsoft expects to save up to 125 million liters of water annually. Microsoft’s theory of a sustainably cooled datacenter will go into full practice in 2026 across data centers in Arizona, Mount Pleasant, Phoenix, and Wisconsin.
[…] broader commitment to sustainability. The company has been exploring advanced technologies like a closed-loop water cooling system, which recycles water continuously to minimize waste. This aligns with Microsoft’s goal of […]