Data center would be among Cedar Rapids’ largest water and energy users (2024)

In Cedar Rapids, where leaders have approved tax breaks for a proposed Google data center, the top 10 largest water users together now use about 60 percent of the city’s average daily treated water.

If Google comes to town, the share of treated drinking water going to big customers — including ethanol plants, food processors and the data center — could increase to 70 percent or more, given estimates city leaders provided The Gazette.

The city has surplus water capacity, rarely needed except for the hottest weeks of summer, and could drill more wells along the Cedar River to increase the supply. Other Iowa communities with large-scale data centers are planning infrastructure upgrades to pull more water from rivers and aquifers.

“There’s no question these facilities use a significant amount of water,” Cedar Rapids City Manager Jeff Pomeranz said about data centers when he spoke this month to The Gazette’s editorial board.

“When we have a new economic development project, one of the first things we look at is, ‘Can we serve it?’ And if we can’t at this moment or can’t three years from now, what are the improvements that need to be made in order to provide for that need?”

As Google considers whether to build the $576 million data center north of The Eastern Iowa Airport, residents wonder how much water and electricity a data center would use and whether the project would raise residents’ rates or deplete the drinking water supply during a drought.

“As long as we get our normal rainfall, I’m sure there’s enough water in the Cedar River and Cedar River alluvium to support a data center,” State Geologist Keith Schilling said. “It’s the droughts we’ve got to worry about and possibly the capacity of the current city wells to come up with that extra volume.”

What is a data center?

Data centers are fortified warehouses where tech firms house linked computer servers and other hardware that support the applications we use and data we store online.

“All of us have pictures in the cloud, documents in the cloud and, increasingly, we’re accessing artificial intelligence,“ said Jim Martin-Schramm, a policy analyst for Clean Energy Districts of Iowa, a nonprofit that focuses on renewable energy and local ownership. ”I don’t think people really grasp how the convenience of cloud-based computing is linked to massive amount of energy consumption.“

Iowa has at least 26 data centers, but only a few are as large as what Google is proposing in Cedar Rapids. Besides a Google site in Council Bluffs, Meta has a complex in Altoona, Apple is building in Waukee and Microsoft has six buildings in West Des Moines.

Data centers use a lot of energy to run computer equipment — plus redundant systems — and to cool the equipment so it can continuously work at a high level. Nobody wants Facebook to go down when they’re uploading vacation photos or for Google to not return search results for the prompt: “Why do data centers use so much energy?“

Data center deal under negotiations

Google and Alliant Energy are negotiating a deal on one or more data centers in the Big Cedar Industrial Center along 76th Avenue SW and Edgewood Road SW.

The state has approved the city’s plan to grant $56 million in tax breaks in the form of a 20-year, 70 percent tax exemption. Google would be required to create at least 31 high-paying jobs.

Cedar Rapids leaders trumpeted the project for the future tax benefits and the way Google’s presence in the Corridor might spur other growth. Google already has invested over $5 billion in its Council Bluffs data center campus, the Des Moines Register reported.

Because Google hasn’t decided yet whether to build in Cedar Rapids, the company declined to provide specific information about projected water and energy use. Alliant and city leaders also are being cautious.

“These things are extremely hard to get done,” Pomeranz said. “And some fall apart very quickly.”

Water use

The water-guzzling habits of data centers are in the spotlight worldwide, with a 2021 article in the journal npj Clean Water reporting a medium-size center “uses as much water as three average-size hospitals or more than two 18-hole golf courses.”

Tech firms use the water to cool computer servers to reduce the chance of equipment failures. More than half the water data centers use is treated drinking water, the article noted, which companies want because it doesn’t have minerals and other contaminants that might degrade chillers and cooling towers.

Google says it’s the only “major cloud provider to provide our annual, site-level data center water consumption.” Its 2023 report showed the firm’s Council Bluffs data centers used more water than any other Google data center in the nation, Silicon Angle reported.

“We take a climate-conscious approach to data center cooling decisions,” Google said in a statement sent to The Gazette. The company “evaluates hyperlocal hydrology” to find the “most effective cooling solution for each campus — whether that is air cooling, water cooling, refrigerants or a combination.”

A Google data center in Cedar Rapids would be among the city’s largest water users.

The city’s No. 1 water customer uses an average 11.7 million gallons of water a day — more than three times the volume of the next highest, which uses 3.3 million gallons of water day on average.

Cedar Rapids would not provide names for these large industrial water users, but a 2010 Gazette article said corn processing giant ADM was the city’s largest water user “by far.”

Altogether, these top 10 users use about 23.8 million gallons of water a day, on average.

City leaders told The Gazette a Google data center would use two-thirds of the largest users. This could be as little as 200,000 gallons per day or as much as 7.8 million gallons, based on the top 10 list.

The city treats about 40 million gallons of water a day, on average, but can increase that to 60 million gallons a day if needed. During some summer months, consumption can be about 55 million gallons a day.

“We are reserving capacity in case the developer completes all five potential data center buildings,” said Dave Wallace, Utilities Engineering manager for the city. “The development agreement requires a minimum of one data center building, which would require less water.”

Google’s energy use

A Google data center would be among the top 10 percent of Alliant’s 10 largest electricity customers, Dennis Jordan, director of Customer, Community & Economic Development for the utility, said in an interview.

That large use of electricity is part of the reason Alliant, an investor-owned utility serving nearly 1 million electric customers in the Midwest, has been trying to recruit data centers to its service areas.

“We view this as an opportunity to grow our business faster and allows us, as we bring these customers on, to spread our fixed costs among more electric sales,” Jordan said. “And that, in turn allows us to keep our costs competitive in the long term.”

Alliant has asked the Iowa Utilities Board for permission to raise rates 7.7 percent for residential electric customers and 5 percent for natural gas customers. A decision is expected this summer.

The application was filed without taking into account a possible data center. But as part of the proceedings, the board asked Alliant to share more information about a data center. The company said Google would qualify for its Individual Customer Rate, a plan for customers using at least 25 megawatts of electricity.

ITC Midwest, which transmits the electricity produced by Alliant, submitted a load interconnection application for up to 300 megawatts of new load from facilities at or near Big Cedar, Alliant said in the filing.

This new load “still has uncertainty in coming to fruition, let alone being at the potential 300 MW load size. IPL (Alliant) is preparing to make service available as soon as March 3, 2026,” the document states.

Climate activists are scrutinizing the energy use of data centers across the country, especially if the centers are getting electricity from utilities that rely on greenhouse gas-emitting coal and natural gas plants.

More than half Alliant’s energy comes from renewable sources — wind and solar. The company plans to add 400 more megawatts of solar by the end of the year, with half coming from the Duane Arnold Solar projects near Palo. But the company still gets some of its juice from coal and gas.

Google says it plans to run its business on carbon-free energy, 24/7, by 2030. The company also is testing demand response, which allows a firm to reduce electrical use during times of peak demand — such summer afternoons.

“If a data center can pull back and provide some grid relief, that could reduce the cost of power for other customers,” Martin-Schramm said.

Other Iowa data centers

The Meta data center complex in Altoona uses more water than Adventureland — an amusem*nt and water park visited by 5,000 people a day in the summer.

And when Meta, the parent company of social media sites Facebook and Instagram, opens two new buildings next year, it will surpass Prairie Meadows Casino & Racetrack and Marzetti Frozen Pasta to become Altoona’s largest water user, consuming more than 300,000 gallons a day, on average, Altoona Utilities Director Dan Scott said.

“Ultimately, Meta has the right to request up to 1 million gallons a day out of our total six,” he said.

The city of 22,000 near Des Moines is designing a fourth water treatment plant and digging two new wells — projects expected to cost $30 million together — to supply an additional 4 million gallons of water per day.

Google paid to expand a water treatment plant in Council Bluffs to supply the water needs of two data centers the tech giant opened there in 2009 and 2013, according to an agreement obtained by The Gazette. When the expansion was complete in 2022, the Council Point Water Purification Plant could pump up to 10 million gallons per day, the Water Works reported in its 2022 annual report.

Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com