To develop the metaverse and artificial intelligence, the American giant Meta wants to set up a new data center in Spain, in the region of Castilla-La Mancha. A very water-intensive project that raises questions in this province regularly affected by drought.
It is in a protected natural reserve, refuge of the black eagles of the region, that the land coveted by Meta is located. If he obtains all the authorizations, his next data center should see the light of day on nearly 180 hectares, along the industrial zone of Talavera de la Reina.
We are 130 km west of the Spanish capital, in an agricultural territory of Castilla-La Mancha, very arid, despite the presence of the Tagus. Here the drought has been going on since February. If farmers do not yet have water restrictions at the moment, everyone fears running out, and giving up part of their production, like the summer of 2022.
Aurora Gomez is an environmental activist and a local child. The water problem, this farmer’s daughter knows it well, and that’s why, she says, she doesn’t understand why Meta wants to settle there. “This place is going to look like a giant warehouse… from the outside, we won’t see the horizon anymore. Everything you see around you, it’s going to disappear!” she laments, through the window of her electric car.
600 million liters of water per year
Meta’s project provides 102 hectares of hangars to house the thousands of servers that will work continuously. Computer systems that need to be cooled to prevent overheating. And to do so, Meta plans to use about 600 million liters of water per year, dhave 200 million, taken from the drinking water network of the city of Talavera de la Reina. The rest in a tributary of the Tagus River.
Meta tempers: “The data center could potentially use up to 200 million liters of drinking water per year, with 82.5 million liters returned to the wastewater network? The overall consumption would therefore be estimated at 117, 5 million liters.
For the environmental activist, this could create shortages in this region affected by repeated droughts.
A data center consumes on average in one day as much water as a Spaniard in one year. That’s already a lot, and that in a context where there would be no global warming, no rise in temperature… Do we want to deprive people here of tap water to allow others to be able to watch cat videos on the internet? It doesn’t make sense to me.
Aurora Gomez, environmental activist “Tu nube seca mi rio”
Are Meta and the digital giants underestimating the energy bill of their data centers? It is in any case not the first time that big names have been pinned on major projects.
In 2022, in Ireland, the European capital of data centers, servers created power cuts and consumed an half a million liters of water a day, and up to five million liters a day when the weather is hot.
In the Netherlands, the facilities of a large American group have used four times more water than expected… so much so that the government has decided to limit access to water for these infrastructures with a moratorium. .
Contacted, Meta ensures that the ecological cost of this project in Spain will be offset by the financing of other projects in the world, in the United States in particular:
As part of our sustainability commitments (…) we will return more water than will be consumed by the Talavera data center, through recycling and water conservation projects.
Meta
For their part, the Spanish public authorities have just declared the project “of general utility”, ie a classification which makes it possible to speed up the procedure, to obtain special exemptions.
In this province where unemployment affects more than 15% of the active population, this project is a priority, according to them.
This will create more than 500 jobs during the construction phase, but above all, the most important thing is that once the site is completed, it will generate in the region and in the town of Talavera de la Reina, more 250 direct jobs
Patricia Franco Jiménez, Minister of Economy of the Castilla-La Mancha region
On the banks of the Tagus, some farmers doubt the boon that this project represents for employment. Starting with Luis Miguel Pinero Sanchez, cereal and market gardener, located about ten kilometers from the future site of Meta. Last year, restrictions on drinking water – the only one suitable for irrigating crops, the water from the Tagus being, according to him, “too crowded” – cost him almost all of his tomato production. Farms would, he said, be endangered by the American giant.
When Meta moves in and pumps the water, we farmers will miss it even more. It seems to me very good that there is activity here, it is true that there is a lack of jobs, that it is a disaster. But that cannot be done on the back of another part of the population, like us, who will find themselves unemployed or have fewer resources.
Luis Miguel Pinero-Sanchez, farmer
A public environmental inquiry is underway. If this gives the green light, construction should begin by the end of the year.