Latest news with #climatetech
Geek Wire
13-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
As data center demand soars, Amazon expands use of recycled waste water to cool its cloud
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Amazon data center in the Portland, Ore., area in 2022. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Amazon Web Services is more than halfway to its 2030 goal of being 'water positive' — meaning it replenishes more clean water than it uses. And supporting that effort is a newly announced initiative to expand its use of recycled waste water instead of drinking water to cool 120 of its U.S. data centers by the end of this decade. AWS is wringing more water out of its cloud operations, marking a 40% improvement in its water use efficiency over the past three years. And it's 53% of the way toward becoming water positive, based on 2024 data — up from 41% from the year before. 'We're pretty proud of the fact that our global water use efficiency is really industry leading,' Kevin Miller, vice president of global data center operations for AWS, said in an interview. The water challenge is driven by data centers containing servers that act as the backbone of the internet, powering increasingly popular artificial intelligence tools. The electronics produce intense heat that needs to be wicked away to keep the devices running properly, and cooling them requires a combination of energy and water use. The issue has become increasingly urgent as Amazon and other cloud giants expand their thirsty data center operations worldwide. Bloomberg recently reported that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. data centers that were built or are under development in the past three years are located in water-stressed areas. Amazon alone plans to invest $100 billion in its data centers over a decade, which includes construction of new facilities. Data center operators use a variety of cooling tech that include fans, air that's cooled using evaporated water, air conditioning, and direct liquid cooling. The strategies are a resource balancing act: air conditioning, for example, draws more electricity, but saves water, while cooling with evaporated water is less energy intensive, but sucks up water. Amazon also has clean energy goals to meet, and since 2023 has matched 100% of its electricity consumption with the purchase of an equal amount of power produced by carbon-free sources. PIpes carrying reclaimed water for cooling at an AWS data center. (AWS Photo) Optimizing cooling To keep its servers humming, AWS relies primarily on fans and evaporation-cooled air, depending on the location of the data center, the time of day, the weather and other factors. The moistened, cooled air is ultimately released from the building. 'We're constantly adjusting based on what's really going on throughout the day to keep it in the optimal cooling configuration, minimizing water usage,' Miller said. Since 2019, AWS has used recycled water at some data centers in Virginia, which is a hub for server facilities. The company currently uses reclaimed water at 24 sites, including locations in California and Singapore. The new initiative will expand the practice to Georgia and Mississippi. Miller declined to say how many data centers AWS has in total, saying that 120 sites represents 'a meaningful share' of its operations. The recycled water typically comes from sewage plants and has been treated but is not potable. By 2030, AWS expects to avoid the consumption of more than 530 million gallons of drinking-water through its use of recycled water. 'Amazon is not only preserving precious drinking water supplies for communities but also demonstrating that water reuse is a viable, sustainable solution for water-intensive industries,' said Brian Biesemeyer, interim executive director of the WateReuse Association, in a statement. To reach water positive, AWS is also investing in water storage efforts; the restoration of watersheds and wetlands that naturally replenish supplies; and the construction of water treatment systems. While it's making progress, critics say the tally should also include the significant amounts of water consumed by some of the power plants that provide energy to AWS. Racks of servers inside an AWS data center in 2023. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Water innovation AWS is on its sixth data center design and continues exploring ways to curb its water use, Miller said. That includes looking for leaks in pipes running to data centers. It's fine-tuning the material that the air flows through when it picks up the water to optimize the moisture in the air. AWS does dynamic models of the airflow within data centers for improved cooling. Other companies are likewise innovating to reduce water use, including fellow Seattle-area cloud behemoth Microsoft. Microsoft is using recycled water at sites in Washington, California, Texas and Singapore, and has designed a closed-loop cooling system, meaning it will need to be filled with water only once. It plans to deploy this approach in Wisconsin and Arizona next year. The company said it will use nominally more power than evaporation systems. 'The industry is committed to responsible water use,' said Josh Levi, president of the Data Center Coalition, by email. 'Data centers are actively investing in and deploying innovations, such as waterless cooling systems, closed-loop systems, and the use of recycled or reclaimed water.' But Amazon remains out in front when considering water use efficiency (WUE), a measure developed by the nonprofit group The Green Grid to indicate how well the resource is being used relative to a data center's energy consumption. Microsoft's WUE was 0.30 liters of water per kilowatt hour of power for its last fiscal year — which is a notable improvement over past performance. Amazon's WUE is half that amount, hitting 0.15 last year.
Geek Wire
10-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
AWS and national lab team up to deploy AI tools in pursuit of fusion energy
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif. (LLNL Photo) Amazon Web Services is teaming up with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory — home to the world's only facility to achieve fusion ignition — to develop artificial intelligence tools to advance the lab's efforts, the two announced today. AWS and LLNL's National Ignition Facility are working together to build an AI-driven troubleshooting and reliability system, and have already deployed generative AI capabilities into the fusion lab's operations. The focus is on using AI to produce real-time solutions to anomalies that arise in the research and addressing increasing operational demands. More than two years ago, NIF reported that it had produced more energy from a fusion reaction than went into it, an accomplishment known as ignition. Since then, the facility has hit that mark seven additional times, most recently in April when it nearly tripled the amount of energy produced in December 2022. Researchers internationally are trying to recreate the fusion reactions that power the Sun — developing 'star in a jar' technologies that will allow humanity to produce nearly limitless clean energy on Earth. That power is increasingly in demand as data centers continue expanding and other sectors of the economy are electrifying their operations. In the new partnership with the federal lab, AWS's AI could help solve the very energy consumption problems it is helping to create. The National Ignition Facility has hit ignition eight times in fusion experiments conducted at LLNL. (LLNL Chart) 'I'm excited to unleash the superpower that is AI on NIF operations,' said Kim Budil, director of LLNL, in a statement. 'By leveraging our extensive historical data through advanced AI techniques, we're solving today's problems faster and paving the way for predictive maintenance and even more efficient operations in the future.' Last week, Washington state companies Helion Energy, Zap Energy and Avalanche Energy participated in a Seattle-area summit to share their progress in working towards commercialized fusion. In the past they celebrated NIF's experiments as a validation that their ambitions are possible. No other facility anywhere has demonstrated fusion ignition, and NIF's objective is strictly research, as opposed to building reactors to put power on the grid. One of the interesting applications being pursued at NIF is unleashing AI on more than 98,000 archived problem logs stretching back 22 years. The documents are a trove of lessons learned, including symptoms, causes and the steps taken to fix the problems. A release from the California-based national lab said the partnership could 'establish a new standard for AI application in high-stakes scientific facilities and may influence operational approaches at other national laboratories.' David Appel, vice president of U.S. Federal Sales at AWS, called LLNL 'an innovation and scientific powerhouse, and we're extraordinarily proud of our partnership together.'
Entrepreneur
10-06-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Turning Up the Heat
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur United Kingdom, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. What if running a heat pump business felt less like drowning in spreadsheets and more like sailing through a well-oiled system? Imagine a world where quotes took minutes instead of days, surveys were pre-filled, designs generated instantly, and paperwork… well, just happened. Not in a dozen different programs or clunky PDFs, but in one seamless platform. In a country racing to decarbonise 26m homes, that vision is more than a luxury - it's a necessity. Step forward Spruce, a rising UK climate tech startup co-founded by Joseph Saxby and Steph Willis in 2023. Spruce is reshaping the heat pump industry by creating something deceptively simple: software designed specifically to enable the people doing the work. At its core, Spruce isn't about disrupting the installer - it's about empowering them. And it's clearly working: within 18 months they're now working with over 500 installation businesses, suppliers, and manufacturers. The installer's reality Running a heat pump business in the UK today is not for the faint-hearted. Ask any independent installer, and you'll hear the same story: long days, low margins, and a worrying amount of time spent on tasks that have little to do with actually fitting heat pumps. Instead of growing their businesses or training new engineers, they're stuck juggling incoming enquiries - most of which never convert - collecting and processing data manually, or wrestling with reams of compliance paperwork. For many, the admin burden is a full-time job on top of a full-time job. The result? Skilled engineers get bogged down. Ambitious companies stall. And newcomers, watching from the sidelines, hesitate to enter an industry that seems laden in inefficiency. This, Spruce argues, is exactly where change must start. Tools to untangle the tangle Spruce's solution isn't a silver bullet- it's a toolkit. One designed not in a boardroom, but through countless conversations with engineers and installation firms navigating these challenges day-to-day. Their Estimate Tool is the first line of defence: it allows installers to filter and respond to incoming enquiries in minutes, not days - quickly separating the serious customers from the time-wasters. Next comes the Survey & Design Tool, which manages heat loss surveys, system design, and reporting. And finally the Paperwork Tool automates all the compliance and admin required, saving almost a whole day's work on every job. But real brilliance lies in collaboration. Where once there were manual data transfers and repeat inputs across different systems, Spruce offers a single workflow, where information flows naturally from one step to the next. And now installers can work with subcontractors and manufacturers in one place, without any need to email PDFs and Excels back-and-forth. The platform doesn't just save time - it transforms how that time is used. Installers can focus on doing what they're trained to do: deliver great work, support customers, and grow their businesses. As Jason Hobbins from Energy My Way puts it: "Spruce is a brilliant innovation which saves us time and increases our conversion rates." Why the installer matters No-one at Spruce is under no illusion about the scale of the climate transition. But while much of the net zero conversation hovers around carbon targets, grant funding, and future tech, they've placed their bet elsewhere - on the overlooked tradespeople tasked with delivering it all. The team believes the key to unlocking mass adoption of heat pumps isn't just more grants or cheaper units - it's putting installers front and centre. That means building systems around their real-world needs, smoothing the path from enquiry to installation, and ultimately making the job more attractive to the next generation of engineers. In that way, Spruce is part of a new wave of climate start-ups that see usability as the linchpin of progress. Innovation only works if people can actually use it today. And in a sector where trust is earned slowly and disruption is often viewed with suspicion, Spruce's approach - build with, not for - has helped it rapidly gain early traction. More than admin relief There's a quiet power in Spruce's mission. It doesn't aim to dominate headlines or reinvent heating technology itself. Instead, it focuses on making life easier for those at the coalface of clean energy transition. Because for every bold carbon target, there are thousands of individual jobs that need doing - each one requiring someone to quote, survey, design, install, and follow up. Spruce's insight is simple: if you make that person's life easier, and their customers happier, everything else moves faster. While much of the industry grapples with policy, pricing, and public awareness, Spruce is cutting through the logistical gridlock at the core of the system. If the UK truly wants to meet its heat pump targets, success won't come from ambition alone - it will require smarter, more effective tools. And that's exactly what Spruce is delivering.
Geek Wire
09-06-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
As data center demand soars, Amazon expands use of wastewater to cool its cloud
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Amazon data center in the Portland, Ore., area in 2022. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Amazon Web Services is more than halfway to its 2030 goal of being 'water positive' — meaning it replenishes more clean water than it uses. And supporting that effort is a newly announced initiative to expand its use of recycled waste water instead of drinking water to cool 120 of its U.S. data centers by the end of this decade. AWS is wringing more water out of its cloud operations, marking a 40% improvement in its water use efficiency over the past three years. And it's 53% of the way toward becoming water positive, based on 2024 data — up from 41% from the year before. 'We're pretty proud of the fact that our global water use efficiency is really industry leading,' Kevin Miller, vice president of global data center operations for AWS, said in an interview. The water challenge is driven by data centers containing servers that act as the backbone of the internet, powering increasingly popular artificial intelligence tools. The electronics produce intense heat that needs to be wicked away to keep the devices running properly, and cooling them requires a combination of energy and water use. The issue has become increasingly urgent as Amazon and other cloud giants expand their thirsty data center operations worldwide. Bloomberg recently reported that nearly two-thirds of the U.S. data centers that were built or are under development in the past three years are located in water-stressed areas. Amazon alone plans to invest $100 billion in its data centers over a decade, which includes construction of new facilities. Data center operators use a variety of cooling tech that include fans, air that's cooled using evaporated water, air conditioning, and direct liquid cooling. The strategies are a resource balancing act: air conditioning, for example, draws more electricity, but saves water, while cooling with evaporated water is less energy intensive, but sucks up water. Amazon also has clean energy goals to meet, and since 2023 has matched 100% of its electricity consumption with the purchase of an equal amount of power produced by carbon-free sources. PIpes carrying reclaimed water for cooling at an AWS data center. (AWS Photo) Optimizing cooling To keep its servers humming, AWS relies primarily on fans and evaporation-cooled air, depending on the location of the data center, the time of day, the weather and other factors. The moistened, cooled air is ultimately released from the building. 'We're constantly adjusting based on what's really going on throughout the day to keep it in the optimal cooling configuration, minimizing water usage,' Miller said. Since 2019, AWS has used recycled water at some data centers in Virginia, which is a hub for server facilities. The company currently uses reclaimed water at 24 sites, including locations in California and Singapore. The new initiative will expand the practice to Georgia and Mississippi. Miller declined to say how many data centers AWS has in total, saying that 120 sites represents 'a meaningful share' of its operations. The recycled water typically comes from sewage plants and has been treated but is not potable. By 2030, AWS expects to avoid the consumption of more than 530 million gallons of drinking-water through its use of recycled water. 'Amazon is not only preserving precious drinking water supplies for communities but also demonstrating that water reuse is a viable, sustainable solution for water-intensive industries,' said Brian Biesemeyer, interim executive director of the WateReuse Association, in a statement. To reach water positive, AWS is also investing in water storage efforts; the restoration of watersheds and wetlands that naturally replenish supplies; and the construction of water treatment systems. While it's making progress, critics say the tally should also include the significant amounts of water consumed by some of the power plants that provide energy to AWS. Racks of servers inside an AWS data center in 2023. (AWS Photo / Noah Berger) Water innovation AWS is on its sixth data center design and continues exploring ways to curb its water use, Miller said. That includes looking for leaks in pipes running to data centers. It's fine-tuning the material that the air flows through when it picks up the water to optimize the moisture in the air. AWS does dynamic models of the airflow within data centers for improved cooling. Other companies are likewise innovating to reduce water use, including fellow Seattle-area cloud behemoth Microsoft. Microsoft is using recycled water at sites in Washington, California, Texas and Singapore, and has designed a closed-loop cooling system, meaning it will need to be filled with water only once. It plans to deploy this approach in Wisconsin and Arizona next year. The company said it will use nominally more power than evaporation systems. But Amazon remains out in front when considering water use efficiency (WUE), a measure developed by the nonprofit group The Green Grid to indicate how well the resource is being used relative to a data center's energy consumption. Microsoft's WUE was 0.30 liters of water per kilowatt hour of power for its last fiscal year — which is a notable improvement over past performance. Amazon's WUE is half that amount, hitting 0.15 last year.
Geek Wire
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Geek Wire
‘We're definitely on the back foot': U.S. risks losing fusion energy race to China, industry leaders warn
Sustainability: News about the rapidly growing climate tech sector and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE Zap Energy's FuZE-Q fusion device. (Zap Photo) REDMOND, Wash. — The race to lead in artificial intelligence isn't the only event in which the U.S. and China are competing for dominance. The pursuit of fusion — the 'Holy Grail' of clean energy — is also pitting the superpowers against each other, and American tech leaders worry China could surge ahead. At a Technology Alliance conference on Tuesday, Washington state companies building commercial fusion technologies raised concerns about China's strategy to pour resources into fusion. 'The U.S. is not committed to fusion. China is, by orders of magnitude,' said Ben Levitt, the head of R&D for Zap Energy, speaking on a fusion panel at the Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase. While the U.S. government spent approximately $800 million a year on fusion efforts during the Biden administration, China is investing more than twice that annually, IEEE Spectrum and others report. The Trump administration has taken action supporting nuclear fission, which powers today's nuclear reactors, but has not shown the same interest in fusion. The sector has become increasingly reliant on venture capital to fund its progress. China is also focused on training fusion physicists and engineers, while President Trump is slashing funding for scientific research. Fusion is so highly sought after given its potential to provide nearly limitless, carbon-free power, which could be critical to meet growing energy demands from AI applications and the global push to decarbonize transportation, the electrical grid, heating and cooling, industrial applications and elsewhere. 'The U.S. started with a very good hand in fusion and has played it extremely poorly,' Levitt said. 'So, yeah, we're definitely on the back foot.' The conference panel also included Brian Riordan, co-founder and chief operating officer of Avalanche Energy, and Anthony Pancotti, co-founder and head of R&D for Helion Energy. Riordan argued that while China appears to be making strides in the race, what matters even more is who develops the most affordable technology. A fusion energy panel at the Technology Alliance's Seattle Investor Summit+Showcase, from left: Anthony Pancotti from Helion Energy, Brian Riordan from Avalanche Energy, Ben Levitt from Zap Energy and moderator Lisa Stiffler from GeekWire. (GeekWire Photo / Todd Bishop) Physicists for decades have pursued fusion energy. But replicating the reactions that power the Sun and stars is massively challenging and requires technologies that can generate super high pressure and temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius, and sustain those conditions — plus efficiently capture the energy that fusion produces. In December 2022, the U.S. National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory hit a key milestone in fusion research, demonstrating that fusion reactions here on Earth could release more power than required to produce them. Images published in January revealed that China appears to be building a fusion research facility modeled on NIF — but even larger. Others suggest the site could be a giant Z-pinch machine — similar to the technology being pursued by Zap. Years ago, a Chinese website posted a graphic of a fusion device that bore a troubling resemblance to Helion's technology, the company has said. 'We have seen copycats in China already, and it is terrifying,' Pancotti said on Tuesday. 'They can mobilize people and money at a scale that is beyond even what venture capital can do in this country. And so I think there's real concern there, and there's real concern around supply chain, too.' Added Levitt: 'I wouldn't be surprised if every single one of our [fusion] concepts has a city designated to it in China.'
