British government advises deleting old photos and emails to "save water"

UK government instructs citizens to delete old files, including photos and emails — because This could supposedly help save water during the national drought.

The recommendations published on Tuesday say that the current situation with water shortages in the UK is now defined as an “incident of national importance”. Five regions of the country have officially declared drought, six more are in “prolonged dry weather”, and water levels in rivers and reservoirs continue to decline.

Given that citizens are being approached directly for help, the situation looks serious. According to the National Drought Group, the implementation of previous recommendations has helped, and water demand is down 20% from its peak on July 11.

However, it is unclear how much (if any) impact “cleaning out the spam folder” will have on overall water consumption. It is somewhat ironic that such demands are made against the backdrop of the UK government’s commitment to “accelerate the growth of the artificial intelligence industry” — a condition that is impossible without the use of data centers that consume significantly more water for cooling.

At the request of journalists, the Agency’s representatives did not provide information on how much water they believe file deletion will save, nor on how much is used by local data centers that store files or train AI.

According to independent estimates, a small data center needs more than 25 million liters per year if it relies on old evaporative cooling methods. Technology companies are now investing heavily in finding alternatives for cooling. Microsoft, for example, has tried place a data center on the seabed and immerse servers in baths with special liquid.

Source: The Verge, Tom`s Hardware