A debate that is being held in communities across the country is coming to Waterloo Region. On Tuesday morning, the region’s Committee on Sustainability, Infrastructure and Development will consider a motion to ask staff to prepare a report on data centres and their potential impact on the region. “There’s been a lot in the news around data centres, and the reality is I don’t think we know enough [about] what they are, what are the implications, what are the economic opportunities,” Councillor Colleen James, who is bringing the motion forward, told CTV News on Monday. The motion calls for staff to investigate job creation opportunities, infrastructure needs, water consumption levels, environmental considerations and potential advocacy concerns. Communities across Canada and North America are grappling with how to handle the explosion in growth in data centres, largely created by the rapid growth of artificial intelligence technology. “The more information we know before policies are created and frameworks are designed, the better we can inform them,” James said. Although data centres have been around for decades, they are growing rapidly in both size and number. “A single pre-AI server might have been in the couple of hundred watts, and now an AI server might easily consume ten times as much power, and couple that with the fact that a lot of people believe there is a lot of money to be made,” Martin Karsten, a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, said. Karsten said the primary concern over data centres is environmental. “I think the biggest concern is clearly energy consumption, and of course, the next question is where is the energy coming from? If you build a data center next to a hydro dam and have extremely clean electricity, then there isn’t really that much of a problem, right? If you build a dedicated gas plant right next to data centre, that’s a whole different ball game.” Karsten said. When it comes to water consumption, he said he thinks that will be less of a concern. “Most modern cooling techniques do not really consume water, they recycle water, they circulate the water, like your car engine circulating coolant,” Karsten explained. The University of Waterloo professor said the topics brought up in James’ motion are important, and said when it comes the data centres, size matters. “It’s all about balance and fitting the locality. I think as long as we’re talking moderately sized data centers, small to moderately sized data centers, they make perfect sense even for the locality like ours,” Karsten said. The committee meeting is scheduled to start at 9 a.m.
