Interviewees:
Jenny Lawler, expert on water treatment at Dublin City University's Water Institute, Ireland
Paul Deane, senior lecturer in clean energy futures at University College Cork, Ireland
Shaolei Ren, professor of electrical and computer engineering at University of California, Riverside, USA
Andrew Lensen, AI researcher and senior lecturer at Te Heranga Waka at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand
Manchan Magan, writer and documentary-maker
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Transcript:
Neil: You're listening to Living Planet, and this week, we have a bonus episode that takes you a bit behind the scenes, so to speak. And for this, I'm joined by my co host, Kathleen Schuster.
Kathleen: Hi, Neil.
Neil: And one of our producers, Jennifer Collins, who recently produced, um, well A very Irish episode for us, wasn't it, Jen?
Jennifer: Yeah, it definitely was very, very Irish.
Kathleen: So, a few weeks ago we brought you along on a trip to Ireland, where we explored a story about the fight over access to water. To recap, Ireland is planning on building a controversial multi-billion-dollar pipeline to pump water from the country's longest river, the Shannon, on Ireland's west coast to feed a growing population and industrial base in and around the capital Dublin on the east coast.
And that could further harm the river's already damaged biodiversity. Some locals aren't happy with the idea of their beloved river being tapped to bolster water supplies on the other side of the country. If you want to listen to that episode, you can scroll back through your feed. It's called Ireland's Water Dilemma, Protecting the Shannon or Powering the Future.
Neil: But actually, if you haven't heard that episode yet, it still makes sense to stick with us, right? Even if it's just for the banter.
Kathleen: Absolutely.
Neil: I'm going to be starting with a listener question because we do have a listener who wrote in after having listened to the episode, Jen, right?
Jennifer: Yeah, we actually had a few listener questions, which was really great, um, some really interesting ones. So I've chosen one of those and I've spoken to an expert to get an answer. So the question came in from Loretta Melnichuk, a listener in Calgary in Canada. and she wants to know why Ireland doesn't reuse grey water for industrial purposes like data center cooling. So a lot of the water, um, used for keeping the servers cool in data centers is actually drinking water and data centers in Ireland are one of the fastest growing industries and they're mainly on the east coast. So some of that potable water from the Shannon that's going to be treated for drinking would also be used to cool the data centers.
Kathleen: And just to clarify for listeners really quickly who might not know that term gray water, that means basically treating water that's been used for washing, showering, or something like laundry, and it's not really safe to drink, but it can be used for other things, right?
Jen: Yeah, exactly. That's it. It could be used even for like, you know, uh, watering your lawn or flushing your toilet. And then it can also be used for these industrial uses like data center cooling. Um, so I spoke to, uh, Dr. Jenny Lawler. Um, she is a self-proclaimed water baby who loves scuba diving and surfing. So she has a real passion for water. And she also works with, uh, Dublin City University's Water Institute. And..
Jenny Lawler: I'm an expert on water treatment and other separation processes, um, with the main focus on the removal of contaminants from water bodies.
Jennifer: Jenny told me that grey water can technically be used for things like data center cooling or other industrial processes.
Jenny Lawler: So where you have segregation, you can have improvement in energy efficiencies when you segregate them and you treat them separately. But it takes improvements in the piping network and in the infrastructure to actually, A, segregate them and then B, treat them. Separately, but other countries have done it successfully, as I said. Um, so it's quite common in the Middle East where they have, you know, a real water crisis. Um, so in Qatar they have a 100 percent reuse of the treated sewage effluent for beneficial reuse. So, you know, it can be done.
Neil: Okay, so why aren't we doing more of this thing?
Jen: Basically, she said that Ireland just doesn't really have the infrastructure. They haven't invested in it, essentially. Um, and she even said that things like black water or, it's also called sewage water, could be used for things like cooling if it was treated properly. It's just, it's just really expensive. And in Ireland, you know, we do really clean up the grey and black water to a very, very high standard, but then it's just discharged back into the environment rather than being reused because that infrastructure just isn't there.
Neil: Okay, so it's all about money and investment again. But I mean, does Jenny think that the pipeline from the Shannon is a good idea or is needed? Because that was the main question of the episode, wasn't it? On whether it would be enough for Dublin to simply, well, fix its leaky water system, which was leaking like was it up to 30 percent of its water, which I just thought was outrageous.
Jennifer: I couldn't believe that figure. Yeah, it's shocking actually how much water is lost. Um, and, you know, Iska Air in Ireland's water utility does say it's fixing those leaks, but that, you know, we need the second pipeline or the country needs the second pipeline. Here's another clip from Jenny.
Jennifer: There's a lot of arguments that say that money would be better spent in investing in the infrastructure itself in the Greater Dublin area, rather than investing in bringing water from another part of the country. It's like, you know, spending all this money on a, on a shiny, lovely new pipeline and then, you know, connecting it to a sieve.
Kathleen: Yeah, I mean, it does seem a bit mysterious why. You would have this issue and not address it in a way that could actually help fix the problem. Um, but it is really interesting to actually hear about these numbers and finally something that could have a potential solution.
Neil: Yeah. But this episode, it also took a bit of an unexpected turn, uh, at some point, right? As you were researching this pipeline project, um, it actually brought you into contact with something that most people probably wouldn't necessarily associate with water.
Newsreel on AI
Kathleen: And that brings us to artificial intelligence and data centers, which are all over the news right now. It seems like we're constantly hearing about AI, whether it's going to save us all or take all of our jobs. And of course, how it's impacting the climate. Jen, could you tell us a little bit about why AI is a big deal when it comes to our natural resources and, um, and of course how data centers play into this?
Jen: Yeah, sure Kathleen. I followed up with several experts on this and they all described AI's energy and water use as substantial because of the computational power needed to train and run these really large, deep learning AI models that we're all familiar with now.
You know, the OpenAI's ChatUPT, Microsoft's Copilot, and this is connected to data centers because AI is trained in those data centers and anytime you ask AI a question that also runs through a data center. So those data centers need lots of water and energy to run those algorithms and keep servers cool and also keep their hardware cool while they're doing that.
Um, so energy demand is just going up and there's just a need for more data centers too. Um, so I spoke to Paul Deane and he's a senior lecturer in clean energy futures at University College Cork in Ireland. And he has done a lot of research on data centers and on AI energy needs. So here's what he had to say.
Paul Deane: AI has a huge, has a ferocious appetite essentially for energy. It needs energy in abundance, but it also needs energy very quickly. This is one of the things that we probably don't give enough attention to when we're thinking about the future of AI. Some of these are. Developers want to clean energy, and I think AI will, will certainly partner very well with things like solar and batteries. If you're looking what's happening in the States at the moment, there's a big interest in coupling AI with cheap gas.
Jen: And actually on the gas issue. We know that at least one of the Stargate project data centers in Texas is actually going to be powered by a gas fired power plant. And Ireland also just released new rules that will mean data centers will have to build on site power generation and they haven't kind of specified that that should be renewable. So there is a big concern that that could mean fossil fuels.
Kathleen: Okay, so we've touched on all of this in our episode on the but maybe you could remind listeners, where do we stand now on energy and water use?
Jen: Yeah, of course. So in Ireland, they use around 21 percent of the country's electricity in 2023. So that was up from 5 percent in 2015. So you can see the growth and the amount of energy they're using just in Ireland alone. And There's currently around 8, 000 data centers globally, and they consume about 1 2 percent of the world's electricity. So, with the huge power demand that could come with AI expansion, that could really increase up to 4 percent by 2030.
And then when it comes to water, which was the focus of the Shannon episode, so there was one study by the University of California, Riverside, in 2023, and that found training a large language model like OpenAI's ChatGBT3. Um, which isn't the latest version of ChatGPT, that can consume millions of liters of water.
Kathleen: So, like, how much water can it use up, um, you know, if you just enter a few questions?
Jen: Yeah, so, running 10 to 50 queries can use up to 500 milliliters of water, and that really depends on where in the world the data center is that the query is running through, so if it's in a place where there's, it's very hot, it's using more water, um, for cooling. So, Shaolei Ren, he's a professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC, uh, Riverside, and he also co-authored the water study. And he found that by 2027, AI could be withdrawing 6. 6 billion cubic meters of water a year globally. That's around six times more than the country of Denmark withdraws in a year. Here's a clip from Shaolei.
Shaolei Ren: So I think we need, even for those drought prone areas or regions, we need to really be careful about how much water pressure we're putting on the local water bodies. If you look at the DOE's recent projection, they was, they estimated that in 2028, the US data center, mostly driven by AI computing. This amount of water consumption will be doubling, at least doubling the 2023 level, or even quadrupling the 2023 level.
Jen: Yeah. And actually making the really powerful chips needed for AI uses a lot of water too, but the UC Riverside researchers didn't actually include that in their study. So there's a whole lot of water that's going into AI, even behind just the data center stuff.
Kathleen: That's fascinating. I'm sure most people, uh, asking ChatGPT simple questions, they don't really think, oh, this is going to use up a lot of our water. But Jen, what about, uh, this new Chinese AI chatbot, DeepSeek? A lot has been made about how it could up end these predictions about AI's insatiable resource appetite. Why is that?
Jen: Yeah, so the experts I spoke to, well, they say there's a lot of uncertainty about just what. impact DeepSeek might have on, uh, energy and water use. But it looks like it uses lower power chips and is a lot smaller. And at the same time, while it's smaller, its performance is also on par with these large language models that we've been using up until now. So I spoke to Andrew Lensen, an AI researcher and senior lecturer at Te Heranga Waka at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. And he said the key thing is that the researchers found a way to make the training stage of AI just less energy intensive.
Andrew Lensen: And so part of the sort of quite revolutionary thing around DeepSeek is that sort of set of techniques they developed to make it more efficient. They've actually published research on that. So that sort of is quite. helpful for, uh, the whole field.
Neil: Alright, so it, it perhaps uses a little less energy, but it's not as big as a game changer as we thought then?
Jen: Yeah, that seems to be the thinking. Um, and it's similar for water use as well.
Neil: But Jen, is there anything, um, else that we can do, uh, to make AI more climate friendly? Because it's obviously a technology that's, well, not only growing, but it can also be extremely beneficial.
Jen: So there's a couple of ways to kind of clean up, uh, AI, so to speak. Um, so you could put data centers in sunny places where there's lots of renewables. You know, you can train the AI during the day when there's a lot of solar energy available. And then when it comes to water, you know, you could place data centers in areas that aren't water scarce. You know, we spoke about earlier using grey water, rainwater harvesting, and water recycling for cooling. And just having data centers in cooler countries where you use more air cooling and you don't have to rely as much on water.
From a personal perspective, what you can do as an individual, I mean, if you're using an AI and just asking a really simple question, like, I often ask AI to work out percentages and stuff like that because I'm just really bad at maths. And you don't need, like, the most sophisticated, energy intensive model for that. You can use, like, an older model. You don't need to use one of these reasoning models for something like that. So, Something like to keep in mind of like what AI you're actually using, you know, and one other interesting point that Andrew Lensen brought up was there's just a responsible use of this technology, you know, when should we be using it?
He pointed out that a lot of companies are embedding AI into everything with what he feels is just no good reason because it boosts their business model. And here he is talking about that.
Andrew Lensen: I don't know if you've, if you use Microsoft products, but Copilot is like everywhere now. Even when it doesn't necessarily need to be, right? Like, I don't need it to summarize every email I read. I don't need it to be in all my Teams meetings. And we're seeing the same thing with, for example, Google. There are so many ways we can use it for good reasons, but when it's been forced onto us, and often it's more of a distraction, it's just such a waste of, of what limited resources we do have. Um, and so, you know, I wonder if there is sort of a regulatory framework or a way to have more responsibility, um, I think place on the companies, because if you try and make it the user's responsibility, that's just sort of shifting the blame.
Kathleen: I have to say, I really appreciate that comment, because I think when we, when we do environmental reporting, um, we do talk a lot about what you or I can do as individuals, but when we're talking about Large structures that are being put into place by, you know, these companies, uh, to the benefit of society. There's, there's always this detractor, you know, with, with the climate and there's only so much control we have over it. But this is a really interesting kind of crossover of where it's our responsibility and the company. So I, I thought that was a really interesting, uh, thing to point out.
Jen: Yeah, I mean, I, I appreciate that Andrew brought this up as well, and it's just something that we need to have a more public debate about when, when it makes sense to use it. So, I thought that was, yeah, I appreciated that point, so.
Kathleen: Yeah, but on that point really quickly, I mean, um, do you guys think a public debate would really help? Because my sense of it would be, yeah, it's just one more thing that we have to keep track of for the climate, but really, you know, we're talking about companies that need to be more aware of their use of natural resources, you know, it's kind of the genie is out of the bottle with technology It's really hard to rein back in and you know something being foisted upon you. Well, that's a bit relative to where you live and what your profession is.
Jen: You know, like you were saying, as a journalist, we have to use Google, we have to use the technology available to us cause we can't, we can't look it up anywhere else in any other way.
Neil: Um, it's also a question of speed and competition. Yeah. You know, I mean, as you said, the genius out of the bottle, you, nobody would ever think of, you know, ditching their smartphones anymore.
Kathleen: Yeah. I don't think an encyclopedia is very helpful at this point. .
Neil: Having said that, I do miss the days of the good old, you know, university library where you were just, it felt far more worthwhile gaining and gathering knowledge, uh, because now you just get everything on the plate and I often, yeah, I don't know how far we can also trust this data and that's the other thing, but, um, that's a different debate, I guess.
Kathleen: Yeah, but, but I, I would be curious to know what would people think? Like if every time you did a search that were like an indication of like, and you've used this much water just by doing that, or if they just like.
Neil: Or you get some sound effects of just water dripping, you know…
Kathleen: This is why people don't like climate reporters, Neil.
Jen: But I think like, you know, I guess a public debate is more about also like, okay, what can, you know, if it's, if there's pressure, what can, what can governments do? Can they bring in these regulatory frameworks to force companies to clean up their act because as you said the genie is out of the bottle and it's about like, okay then how do we make that genie more efficient and cleaner?
Kathleen: I'm gonna have to change the subject just slightly because there was one other thing we wanted to get to and that was You know in your Shannon episode an element that you brought in that was quite unusual and something we don't usually talk about Was related to Irish mythology and I found this very intriguing, you know, how you connected it to the present day and the data centers and AI and streams of information. Before we hear a clip, uh, just a shout out to another environment reporter with our team, Evelyn McClafferty, who, uh, did a great job in voicing this. And I always love hearing her, but, um, yeah, let's listen to this really quickly.
Evelyn McClafferty: I am the river Shannon, on Shannon in Irish, the original language of this Island. Named for the goddess Shunon, granddaughter of the sea god Manannan Maklir, I was born when she journeyed to seek wisdom at the Well of Conla. When she did, the waters rose forth, unifying with Shunon and transforming her into me.
Jen: Yeah, so I've been listening to this other podcast about a year ago, um, and, uh, you know, there was this Irish writer, Manchan Magan, and he speaks Irish and he has a really deep knowledge of Irish folklore. And he was talking about, you know, Irish language and culture and the landscape and all this environmental knowledge that's encoded in, in all of those things. And then I got his book, Listen to the Land Speak because I was kind of curious about this idea and that talks about rivers and rivers being feminine and holding all this knowledge, um, which you can just hear in the, in the snippet of the Shannon we just played there. So I told Neil this story and also another amazing story from Irish mythology called the Salmon of Knowledge. I don't know if you guys want to hear that.
Neil: I always want to hear more about the salmon..
Kathleen: I definitely want to hear about the Salmon of Knowledge.
Jen: Yeah. So it's this. So there's a, there was a salmon in the river Shannon. There's a couple of different stories about how the salmon has all the knowledge in the world. Uh, but, uh, one of the stories is that he ate some like magical hazelnuts that were in the river. And those hazelnuts also like give the river wisdom. Anyway, like it's, the Irish mythology is a bit mad, but I guess all mythologies are a bit mad. But this, uh, salmon, its name was, his name was Fintan. I just like that the salmon has a name and his name was Fintan. But yeah, I was telling Neil these stories and we were talking about them. The idea kind of sprang up that, you know, the Shannon holds all this wisdom and knowledge according to Irish mythology and, you know, people would turn to it for insight. And now that water from the Shannon could be piped to Dublin to power data centers and AI, which is kind of now where we, you know, go to gain our knowledge and wisdom and insight. So it's this, you know, kind of connection between the mythology and, and, and actually what's happening, I guess. And then of course, you know, as, as Neil said, we tried to wedge the, the environment. The pipeline story just came on top. I did actually get to speak to Manchan when I was back in Ireland. I did an interview with him and I I couldn't use his interview in the end, it just didn't quite fit in, but it really informed the Shannon narration. And he talks about those myths, kind of mirroring those in other cultures, so here's just a clip from Manchan.
Manchan Magan: I spend a lot of my time now with Aboriginal elders in Australia, with Native American elders in the States and in Canada, with people in South America and Africa. And they all have similar stories, that the land is alive, that it's a vibrant force, that it is being infused and fed by the water. And the one thing I know about India, and I've spent a lot of time living in India, is the rivers are so potent for them. You know, the Ganges River, Varanasi, where they put the, where they put the dead people and they go back straight to the other world.
So I started thinking about that after living in India. I came back to Ireland and thought, okay, so rivers must be important to us. And then it just dawned on me, I was blind for it because I was Brought up in school, where we just named the rivers, and we named the industries that were on the rivers, or the barges, or how man exploited rivers.
But then I started looking at the myths again, and realized, well first, if you look at the language. Every single river in Ireland, has a feminine name. You know the way, the language has masculine and feminine words. They're all feminine, except for one. A miserable little river called Untúlán in Cork. And it really means the insignificant, miserable thing.
So that's male, but the rest are all female. The most important rivers in Ireland, there's two key rivers in Ireland. The Boyne River, which is on the east coast of Ireland, and then the Shannon River. The Shannon River is our great goddess river. It's our great mighty river.
Kathleen: I think for some people it might still be just a bit, I don't know, it kind of, yeah, it feels a bit spiritual or it's just, it's something we don't really perceive in our, uh, in our lives anymore. If, especially if you live in an urban environment, I think it might be different for people who. They live in the countryside. So it, it is, I think, really important to, to reconnect with those ideas because they were around for so much longer than they, than they haven't been, so to speak. Like it's actually relatively recent that we have made such a divide, I think, between ourselves and nature.
Jen: But yeah, I mean, this was like a big conversation between Neil and I when we were putting this together, you know, cause I was also afraid, we were both afraid that it would just be like a little bit like woo woo or a little bit like. over the top. But, you know, I think it is, like, we do have these connections to nature, and I think that's becoming, I think particularly during, you know, the pandemic, like, one of the big things is, like, going outside and having that, you know, like, going down to your local park or, you know, the river nearby, you know, a lot of people spoke about how important that was for them and how healing that was.
So I don't think it has to be this kind of super spiritual, like, you know, woo woo kind of thing. But yeah, there's always the, the danger of that, of course. But, um, and I think, you know, for Manchan, that's also something he's aware of, like, you know, he's talking about these things and he's talking about, you know, how we can learn to live more lightly on the land again, like, you know, our predecessors and, and not to see rivers and natural resources, just it's purely something to be exploited, um, and he's not advocating that we can go, we should go back in time and live without electricity or modern conveniences, he just kind of is asking us to maybe take a different perspective and, and see these things in a, in a, in a new old light, so to speak.
Neil: Okay, so I think now it's time, Jen. We've talked a lot about the episode and a lot of serious topics, but I mean, behind the scenes, if we look behind the scenes, your reporting trip. I remember there were a couple of phone calls we had where you had me in stitches because it sounded like you'd landed in a Father Ted episode. It was comedic, but there was also dark comedy there, right?
Jen: Yeah, I mean, I felt like I was just along for the ride on that reporting trip. Um, you're not? Yes, yes, hi, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Thank you so much for meeting me. This is, uh, what's your name again? Oh, good to see you. I went down to Limerick from Dublin and I met with the Rivertown and Protection Alliance.
I kind of thought I would meet with the chairman, Gerry Siney, from the episode. People who've heard it will know him. And, you know, would meet one or two people there. But I was, you know, introduced to a whole array of, like, amazing characters. And I spent two days, they spent two days. Bring me, you know, around to all of these different, all these different places to show me, you know, what, what the impact of this pipeline could be.
Kathleen: I think what we're looking for is for you to dish a story that we didn't actually get.
Jen: I'm going to, I'm going to get there.
Kathleen: Yeah, no, but I, I should say, I think, uh, Jer really captured the hearts of our team. Like everybody was like, this guy's amazing. And it was. Yeah, it was so, I don't know, it was really, it felt very personal hearing those stories as well. And that's what we're always aiming for, but it doesn't always come through. But with them, it seems like, it seemed clear that you probably witnessed so much more behind the scenes than actually made it into the episode.
Jen: Yeah, I mean, you know, I was interviewing one other, uh, farmer whose land is going to be affected by the pipeline, the pipeline is coming through, going through, and, uh, if it's built. And there's going to be a lot of posters paid for and bought for by people who are friends of the people who are giving them the seeds. And, uh, you know, I was just kind of towards the end of that interview and one of the other members of the alliance just, you know, burst into the room and was like you know we have to go and uh we were kind of like oh god what's going on you know.
And um he was like you know Gerard's mother in law just died and it's like I mean it does it's not funny like but also I was like what because Gerard is 85 so I was just like what age is his mother in law and so we were like oh okay like I came out to Ger and I was like, you know, of course, like, we don't have to, uh, you know, we don't have to meet tomorrow because we have, we're planning to meet tomorrow to go out into the river with Pat, you know, uh, Pat Lysate, this boat owner, um, who took us out in the river the next day.
But he was like, no, no, it's fine. You know, like, uh, we were expecting. this and, um, you know, my wife has like seven siblings, so they'll be looking after it. I'll just have to be back for the removal tomorrow evening because the funerals happen really quickly in Ireland. So I was like, okay, that's grand.
Kathleen: Um, but how old was his mother in law?
Jen: Okay, so she was in her 90s. I think his wife is just a bit younger than him, so. But just, yeah, the whole timing of it, just everything, like a bunch of other stuff happened as well. I was like, this is just somehow like fits with this, you know? And then the next day we went out on the boat and that was also kind of a, uh, yeah, like, I don't know, um, also had its hairy moments because Ger like nearly went over into the water so many times and I was just like oh my god like Ger is only out on the river because of me like on this little boat if anything happens to him. I don't want to be mean or anything, he's like such a lovely man and very um, dignified man, I don't want to say anything like that, but he, it was just the whole thing was just quite, it just felt like quite comedic because uh, yeah, it did feel like an episode of Father Ted and everybody was quite funny about it, like Pat was like to Ger, you know, next time you come Ger now we'll get a hoist and like hoist you out of the water and.
You know, yeah, so they were just kind of joking about it. I mean, Ger did say, like, don't tell anybody, you know, I had trouble getting out of this boat, so sorry, Ger. Now you've told everybody. I've let the cat out of the bag.
Neil: Okay, Jen, thank you so much, uh, for this glimpse behind the scenes. We really appreciate it. It sounds like you had a really fantastic time, uh, doing this story and, um, yeah, that wraps up this episode of Living Planet for this week. Yeah. We could still go on. And to all our listeners out there, if you made it this far and haven't listened back to the Shannon episode yet, do so now. It's really worth it. It's a really nice soundscaped episode with great reporting by Jennifer Collins, whom you've just heard. And next week, Kathleen. We'll be finding out, uh, about carbon, right? It's a story that you were working on. Any final words for our listeners or teaser on that story?
Kathleen: Oh, you know, it just answers every question you've been too afraid to ask about carbon, basically.
Neil: And I've got so many.. Living Planet is brought to you by DW in Bonn.