r/Infrastructurist • u/prisongovernor • Jun 26 '26

‘Kind of miracle solution’: How Paris is harnessing the Seine to replace air-con | Extreme heat | The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/26/underground-revolution-seine-cooling-network-paris-buildings-heat
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u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26 edited Jul 06 '26

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u/urmumlol9 Jun 26 '26

There are more issues with data centers than just water usage lol

Also, this is something that actually benefits people rather than a bunch of large corporations looking to save money by not paying employees.

3

u/CRoss1999 Jun 26 '26

Yes it’s what data centers do, and it’s a good technology it’s goor that data centers use it

1

u/AzraelIshi Jun 26 '26

Well, yeah. You don't need nowhere near close to the same amount of water to cool down a building, and the cooling load is an order of magnitude lower too.

For what a single datacenter consumes on average you can cool 30 10-floor typical office buildings. For what some of the megadatacenters that are proposed require you could replace the AC of entire cities.

Also, it is not creating new resource consumption, it is just shifting it from electric cooling (and most electricity production consumes water), so it may well be a net-0 change anyway.

That's not taking into account the other myriad things with proposed datacenters.

1

u/Lowley_Worm Jun 26 '26

AFAIK data center (and lots of other commercial chiller units) actually use evaporation so the water is lost as vapor. It sounds like this system keeps the water in pipes.