Keep up with the innovative tech transforming business
Tech Brew keeps business leaders up-to-date on the latest innovations, automation advances, policy shifts, and more, so they can make informed decisions about tech.
To conserve water, Microsoft is doing more than limiting showers to under five minutes.
The company announced last month that its new data centers will be cooled using a water recycling system that doesn’t consume any extra water. That means that after the system is filled with water during construction, the same water will circulate to cool the servers and then be chilled again in a “closed loop.” Similar technology is currently being used to heat and cool residential buildings.
The new water strategy will go live in Microsoft data centers in Arizona and Wisconsin starting in 2026.
That said, all the company’s existing data centers will continue to use Microsoft’s current water- and air-cooling technology, which includes adiabatic and free air cooling systems.
In a statement to Tech Brew, Steve Solomon, Microsoft’s VP of datastructure engineering, said Microsoft doesn’t “currently have plans to retrofit existing data centers” with the new water system.
“[We] will continually invest in improving the operation of all our data centers to minimize water use,” he said.
Solomon wrote in a blog post that the recycled-water systems will result in “a nominal increase in our annual energy usage compared to our evaporative data center designs across the global fleet.” When we asked if the energy being used to power the data centers will be renewable, Solomon told us Microsoft is “making long-term investments to bring more carbon-free electricity to the grids where we operate.”
“Microsoft is committed to responsible operations of our data centers, with sustainability firmly in mind,” Solomon continued. “We continue to advocate for the expansion of clean energy solutions around the world.”