Microsoft has unveiled a cutting-edge data center design aimed at enhancing efficiency for artificial intelligence (AI) applications while eliminating the need for water-based cooling systems. This initiative aligns with the company’s broader sustainability objectives for its data center operations.

Earlier this year, Microsoft introduced its “Datacenter Community Pledge,” which emphasizes the company’s commitment to addressing societal challenges and delivering positive impacts to local communities through its growing data center network. As part of this pledge, Microsoft committed to designing and operating its facilities in ways that support global climate goals, aiming to become carbon negative, water positive, and zero waste by 2030.

Traditional data centers generate significant heat, often relying on water-intensive cooling systems to manage temperatures. Experts estimate that a mid-sized U.S. data center consumes approximately 300,000 gallons of water daily, equivalent to the daily usage of 1,000 households. This places data centers among the top commercial and industrial water consumers in the country.

To address this challenge, Microsoft’s upcoming data centers in Phoenix, Arizona, and Mt. Pleasant, Wisconsin, will serve as pilot sites for innovative cooling systems that do not depend on water. These facilities, designed with next-generation cooling technologies, aim to eliminate water evaporation and could save up to 125 million liters of water annually per data center. Microsoft expects these new sites to begin operations by late 2027 and plans to incorporate the advanced cooling systems into all future data center designs.

The new cooling system operates using a closed-loop liquid cooling method. During construction, water is added to the system, which then circulates continuously between the servers and chillers to dissipate heat. This approach eliminates the need for a regular fresh water supply.

Beyond the new cooling technology, Microsoft has implemented additional measures to conserve water. The company reported a 39% improvement in its Water Usage Effectiveness (WUE) in the most recent fiscal year compared to 2021. These improvements have been supported by the increased use of alternative water sources, such as reclaimed and recycled water, in data centers located in Texas, Washington, California, and Singapore.

In a statement about the initiative, Steve Solomon, Vice President of Datacenter Infrastructure Engineering at Microsoft, highlighted the company’s progress:

We have been working since the early 2000s to reduce water use and improved our WUE by 80% since our first generation of datacenters. As water challenges grow more extreme, we know we have more work to do. The shift to the next generation datacenters is expected to help reduce our WUE to near zero for each datacenter employing zero-water evaporation. As our fleet expands over time, this shift will help reduce Microsoft’s fleetwide WUE even further.