James Eklund Featured in BizWest Article Following the Confluence Colorado Water Summit
Sherman & Howard water law attorney and rancher James Eklund moderated a panel discussion about the region’s fastest-growing water-intensive industries and how they affect water demand at the 2024 BizWest Confluence Colorado Water Summit. Following the conference, BizWest published an article featuring Eklund’s insights from the panel discussion on the correlation between artificial intelligence (AI) and water usage. Eklund brought awareness to the audience on water consumption by data centers and chip manufacturing plants.
Below is an excerpt from the article.
Many in the West think of oil and gas as a main industrial use of water, but data centers have become a new target for concerns of water overuse as the U.S. works to onshore manufacturing of the chips used to power our electronic devices on the market today, and the data centers that provide the bandwidth to AI.
“Microsoft opens three data centers a week,” said James Eklund, a Denver water attorney who was the architect of the Colorado Water Plan, and moderator of the Water-Intensive Industries panel Thursday. “To keep pace with all your ChatGPT searching in the U.S. West, we’re looking at 600,000 acre-feet being consumed by data centers in 2024. That’s 200 billion gallons of water.” By way of comparison, 1 acre foot of water is enough water for two to three families to live off of in a year.
For the data centers that help feed that technology, that energy use for the most part comes in the form of evaporative water cooling to ensure equipment doesn’t overheat.
In Colorado, the most prevalent use of water is in the agriculture sector, followed by municipal use. Industrial uses, such as data centers, oil and gas, beverage manufacturing, also are at play. Data centers aren’t as intense in Colorado as other states, mainly because of state policies and taxation. But, data centers are prevalent in Cheyenne and other parts of the Rocky Mountain west.
Additionally, with the U.S. working to bring chip manufacturing onshore, that’s a bit more water usage.
Eklund pointed to the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. that is expanding in Phoenix after being open just a couple of years. “That plant alone uses 10,000 to 40,000 gallons of water per year to make their chips,” he said.
“That means the people who pay attention to water and energy footprints and the artificial intelligence those chips enable, people in this room are going to need to pay attention to where this plant is going, whose water supply they’re relying on, and if that is sustainable.”
Read the full article HERE. (Subscription required.)
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