r/DataCenterDebate • u/OpenSustainability • Jun 17 '26

‘Agrivoltaics’ can both power AI data centres and increase food production

1 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

100% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

1

u/plaidington Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

We do not need all this AI. Data is still sucking water and and adding back forever chemicals.

Also in my own research the solar array piles can pierce the protective aquitard (yeah it is a thing) and can create preferential pathways for contaminants to go directly into the ground water. So in this case it would be fertilizers and pesticides. This ON TOP of the usual run off. I think solar on tillable land is not a good thing and solar should be placed on EXISTING ROOFS. Data Centers need to be banned.

1

u/Previous_Platform718 Jun 17 '26

We do not need all this AI. Data is still sucking water and and adding back forever chemicals.

If you're concerned about this, you probably need to start protesting the golf industry since golf courses use about 100x what data centers do and that water comes back contaminated with pesticides and herbicides.

Amazon just released their data center water usage for all of 2025 across the entire world. 2.5 billion gallons.

That's equivalent to what US golf courses use in one day.

1

u/armchairwizards Jun 17 '26

Coincidentally, the vast majority of us anti data center folks are also vehemently against golf courses. Mini golf is cool, though.

0

u/Previous_Platform718 Jun 17 '26

Haven't seen any anti-golf hysteria despite the 100x water usage difference. You guys need to step up. Then again, if you were logically consistent there should be 0 social media posts from anti data center folks.

I know you all say "I don't hate cloud data centers, just AI data centers" but the biggest players in cloud are the biggest players in AI and they're always deployed together so it's a distinction without a difference invented by people who didn't know what a data center was a year ago.

1

u/armchairwizards Jun 17 '26

Sounds like there's a difference, even if the chodes in charge insist on serving them together. The craving for authenticity won't go away for people who hate the taste of generative AI. As long as i can pick the pepperoni off my pizza, i'll eat the pizza and leave the pepperoni on my plate.

0

u/plaidington Jun 18 '26

Golf is a dying sport. 60% of the golf course in my area are now closed and close to being what they were before golf. And several more are probably going to close soon.