Water Science and Technology

Image of data centre by Rsparks 3. Reproduced under creative common licence. From an environmental perspective there is not a lot of good things to say about data centres and their rapid growth. Globally they are using about 2% of global electricity which is estimated to rise to as much as 5% by the end of the decade.  Of course the gigawatts of electricity being consumed represents gigatonnes of CO2 emissions. The lesser known fact is that they are consuming about 5 billion m 3  of water every year for cooling. A lot of suggestions have been made as to how this waste heat could be used in particular district heating and heat to electricity conversion. However, according to Diaz-Martin and Berquist (2025) two new innovative ideas are showing huge promise in terms of economic value and contributing to net zero.  These are direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide which in theory could remove up to 1,000 megatonnes of CO 2  annually contributing to decarboni...

  Published last month (August, 2026) a unique report exploring the operational reasons for one of the largest wastewater treatment plant failures ever recorded – the Moa Point WWTP in Wellington New Zealand on the 4 th  February 2026.  Flooding severely damaged the main unit processes, in particular  the primary, secondary (biological) treatment and UV disinfection, and also its electrical and control systems. Six months later the plant is still only operational in preliminary mode, with the screened wastewater discharged via a 1.8 km long sea outfall. According to Gregory Walligora (@lordmacgreg  on X), who has been documenting this case, 70,000 m 3  of untreated wastewater has been discharged to sea each day since the 4 th  February, equivalent to 15 million m 3  to the end of August.       The key finding of the report is the lack of resilience in plant design and operation, although it also showed it was impossib...