• Government fast-tracks LDA Design and Fereday Pollard-designed reservoirs in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire

    Schemes designated ‘nationally significant’ as part of wider efforts to unlock housing growth and address long-term infrastructure shortfalls

    Source: LDA DesignA rendering of the proposed new Lincolnshire reservoir
    Two new reservoir projects proposed by Anglian Water and Cambridge Water have been awarded nationally significant infrastructure status, with the government stepping in to fast-track the planning process amid growing concern about the impact of water shortages on housing and economic development.
    The reservoirs, located near March in Cambridgeshire and south of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, are now set to bypass the local decision-making process and will be determined directly by Steve Read, the environment secretary. The intervention forms part of the government’s broader “plan for change”, which seeks to accelerate the delivery of 150 major infrastructure projects and support the construction of 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current parliament.
    Design proposals, developed by LDA Design and Fereday Pollard, include sculpted embankments formed from excavated soil, integrated wetland habitats and publicly accessible routes intended to support recreation and biodiversity.
    According to government figures, the Fens Reservoir is expected to supply around 87 million litres of water per day to 250,000 homes when completed in 2036. The Lincolnshire Reservoir would deliver up to 166 million litres per day for as many as 500,000 homes, with an anticipated completion date of 2040.
    The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairssaid the decision to intervene reflects the urgency of addressing regional water stress. “Today we are backing the builders not the blockers, intervening in the national interest and slashing red tape to make the planning process faster to unblock nine new reservoirs,” said water minister Emma Hardy.
    “This government will secure our water supply for future generations and unlock the building of thousands of homes as part of the plan for change.”

    Source: LDA DesignA rendering of the proposed new Fens reservoir
    The reservoirs are being brought forward against a backdrop of strained infrastructure capacity and an extended period without new large-scale water storage projects. No major reservoirs have been delivered in England since 1992.
    According to the government, the combination of population growth, ageing infrastructure and climate change has created “a significant risk that the UK could run out of clean drinking water by the middle of the next decade”.
    Water scarcity has already delayed housing development in parts of the east of England and South-east, including in Cambridge and north Sussex. The government has said that the Fens and Lincolnshire reservoirs will help to address these blockages by providing the baseline infrastructure needed for new homes to proceed.
    David Black, chief executive of Ofwat, said: “We welcome the clear focus the government is placing upon accelerating the delivery of supply and resilience schemes that will meet our future water needs and support economic growth. Alongside the £2bn of development funding announced at our 2024 price review, this will help us to deliver the largest programme of major water infrastructure projects seen in decades.”
    The Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire schemes are two of nine reservoirs across England that water companies have committed to deliver by 2050. Together, they are expected to add 670 million litres per day to the national supply.
    #government #fasttracks #lda #design #fereday
    Government fast-tracks LDA Design and Fereday Pollard-designed reservoirs in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire
    Schemes designated ‘nationally significant’ as part of wider efforts to unlock housing growth and address long-term infrastructure shortfalls Source: LDA DesignA rendering of the proposed new Lincolnshire reservoir Two new reservoir projects proposed by Anglian Water and Cambridge Water have been awarded nationally significant infrastructure status, with the government stepping in to fast-track the planning process amid growing concern about the impact of water shortages on housing and economic development. The reservoirs, located near March in Cambridgeshire and south of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, are now set to bypass the local decision-making process and will be determined directly by Steve Read, the environment secretary. The intervention forms part of the government’s broader “plan for change”, which seeks to accelerate the delivery of 150 major infrastructure projects and support the construction of 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current parliament. Design proposals, developed by LDA Design and Fereday Pollard, include sculpted embankments formed from excavated soil, integrated wetland habitats and publicly accessible routes intended to support recreation and biodiversity. According to government figures, the Fens Reservoir is expected to supply around 87 million litres of water per day to 250,000 homes when completed in 2036. The Lincolnshire Reservoir would deliver up to 166 million litres per day for as many as 500,000 homes, with an anticipated completion date of 2040. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairssaid the decision to intervene reflects the urgency of addressing regional water stress. “Today we are backing the builders not the blockers, intervening in the national interest and slashing red tape to make the planning process faster to unblock nine new reservoirs,” said water minister Emma Hardy. “This government will secure our water supply for future generations and unlock the building of thousands of homes as part of the plan for change.” Source: LDA DesignA rendering of the proposed new Fens reservoir The reservoirs are being brought forward against a backdrop of strained infrastructure capacity and an extended period without new large-scale water storage projects. No major reservoirs have been delivered in England since 1992. According to the government, the combination of population growth, ageing infrastructure and climate change has created “a significant risk that the UK could run out of clean drinking water by the middle of the next decade”. Water scarcity has already delayed housing development in parts of the east of England and South-east, including in Cambridge and north Sussex. The government has said that the Fens and Lincolnshire reservoirs will help to address these blockages by providing the baseline infrastructure needed for new homes to proceed. David Black, chief executive of Ofwat, said: “We welcome the clear focus the government is placing upon accelerating the delivery of supply and resilience schemes that will meet our future water needs and support economic growth. Alongside the £2bn of development funding announced at our 2024 price review, this will help us to deliver the largest programme of major water infrastructure projects seen in decades.” The Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire schemes are two of nine reservoirs across England that water companies have committed to deliver by 2050. Together, they are expected to add 670 million litres per day to the national supply. #government #fasttracks #lda #design #fereday
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    Government fast-tracks LDA Design and Fereday Pollard-designed reservoirs in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire
    Schemes designated ‘nationally significant’ as part of wider efforts to unlock housing growth and address long-term infrastructure shortfalls Source: LDA DesignA rendering of the proposed new Lincolnshire reservoir Two new reservoir projects proposed by Anglian Water and Cambridge Water have been awarded nationally significant infrastructure status, with the government stepping in to fast-track the planning process amid growing concern about the impact of water shortages on housing and economic development. The reservoirs, located near March in Cambridgeshire and south of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, are now set to bypass the local decision-making process and will be determined directly by Steve Read, the environment secretary. The intervention forms part of the government’s broader “plan for change”, which seeks to accelerate the delivery of 150 major infrastructure projects and support the construction of 1.5 million new homes by the end of the current parliament. Design proposals, developed by LDA Design and Fereday Pollard, include sculpted embankments formed from excavated soil, integrated wetland habitats and publicly accessible routes intended to support recreation and biodiversity. According to government figures, the Fens Reservoir is expected to supply around 87 million litres of water per day to 250,000 homes when completed in 2036. The Lincolnshire Reservoir would deliver up to 166 million litres per day for as many as 500,000 homes, with an anticipated completion date of 2040. The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) said the decision to intervene reflects the urgency of addressing regional water stress. “Today we are backing the builders not the blockers, intervening in the national interest and slashing red tape to make the planning process faster to unblock nine new reservoirs,” said water minister Emma Hardy. “This government will secure our water supply for future generations and unlock the building of thousands of homes as part of the plan for change.” Source: LDA DesignA rendering of the proposed new Fens reservoir The reservoirs are being brought forward against a backdrop of strained infrastructure capacity and an extended period without new large-scale water storage projects. No major reservoirs have been delivered in England since 1992. According to the government, the combination of population growth, ageing infrastructure and climate change has created “a significant risk that the UK could run out of clean drinking water by the middle of the next decade”. Water scarcity has already delayed housing development in parts of the east of England and South-east, including in Cambridge and north Sussex. The government has said that the Fens and Lincolnshire reservoirs will help to address these blockages by providing the baseline infrastructure needed for new homes to proceed. David Black, chief executive of Ofwat, said: “We welcome the clear focus the government is placing upon accelerating the delivery of supply and resilience schemes that will meet our future water needs and support economic growth. Alongside the £2bn of development funding announced at our 2024 price review, this will help us to deliver the largest programme of major water infrastructure projects seen in decades.” The Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire schemes are two of nine reservoirs across England that water companies have committed to deliver by 2050. Together, they are expected to add 670 million litres per day to the national supply.
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  • Mapping the Expanding Role of 3D Printing in Micro and Nano Device Fabrication

    A new review by researchers from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, CETC 54, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen University, and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China surveys the latest developments in 3D printing for microelectronic and microfluidic applications. The paper released on Springer Nature Link highlights how additive manufacturing methods have reached sub-micron precision, allowing the production of devices previously limited to traditional cleanroom fabrication.
    High-resolution techniques like two-photon polymerization, electrohydrodynamic jet printing, and computed axial lithographyare now being used to create structures with feature sizes down to 100 nanometers. These capabilities have broad implications for biomedical sensors, flexible electronics, and microfluidic systems used in diagnostics and environmental monitoring.
    Overview of 3D printing applications for microelectronic and microfluidic device fabrication. Image via Springer Nature.
    Classification of High-Precision Additive Processes
    Seven categories of additive manufacturing, as defined by the American Society for Testing and Materialsserve as the foundation for modern 3D printing workflows: binder jetting, directed energy deposition, material extrusion, material jetting, powder bed fusion, sheet lamination, and vat photopolymerization.
    Among these, 2PP provides the finest resolution, enabling the fabrication of nanoscale features for optical communication components and MEMS support structures. Inkjet-based material jetting and direct ink writingallow patterned deposition of conductive or biological materials, including stretchable gels and ionic polymers. Binder jetting, which operates by spraying adhesives onto powdered substrates, is particularly suited for large-volume structures using metals or ceramics with minimal thermal stress.
    Fused deposition modeling, a form of material extrusion, continues to be widely used for its low cost and compatibility with thermoplastics. Although limited in resolution, it remains practical for building mechanical supports or sacrificial molds in soft lithography.
    Various micro-scale 3D printing strategies. Image via Springer Nature.
    3D Printing in Microelectronics, MEMS, and Sensing
    Additive manufacturing is now routinely used to fabricate microsensors, microelectromechanical systemactuators, and flexible electronics. Compared to traditional lithographic processes, 3D printing reduces material waste and bypasses the need for masks or etching steps.
    In one example cited by the review, flexible multi-directional sensors were printed directly onto skin-like substrates using a customized FDM platform. Another case involved a cantilever support for a micro-accelerometer produced via 2PP and coated with conductive materials through evaporation. These examples show how additive techniques can fabricate both support and functional layers with high geometric complexity.
    MEMS actuators fabricated with additive methods often combine printed scaffolds with conventional micromachining. A 2PP-printed spiral structure was used to house liquid metal in an electrothermal actuator. Separately, FDM was used to print a MEMS switch, combining conductive PLA and polyvinyl alcohol as the sacrificial layer. However, achieving the mechanical precision needed for switching elements remains a barrier for fully integrated use.
    3D printing material and preparation methods. Image via Springer Nature.
    Development of Functional Inks and Composite Materials
    Microelectronic applications depend on the availability of printable materials with specific electrical, mechanical, or chemical properties. MXene-based conductive inks, metal particle suspensions, and piezoelectric composites are being optimized for use in DIW, inkjet, and light-curing platforms.
    Researchers have fabricated planar asymmetric micro-supercapacitors using ink composed of nickel sulfide on nitrogen-doped MXene. These devices demonstrate increased voltage windowsand volumetric capacitance, meeting the demands of compact power systems. Other work involves composite hydrogels with ionic conductivity and high tensile stretch, used in flexible biosensing applications.
    PEDOT:PSS, a common conductive polymer, has been formulated into a high-resolution ink using lyophilization and re-dispersion in photocurable matrices. These formulations are used to create electrode arrays for neural probes and flexible circuits. Multiphoton lithography has also been applied to print complex 3D structures from organic semiconductor resins.
    Bioelectronic applications are driving the need for biocompatible inks that can perform reliably in wet and dynamic environments. One group incorporated graphene nanoplatelets and carbon nanotubes into ink for multi-jet fusion, producing pressure sensors with high mechanical durability and signal sensitivity.
    3D printed electronics achieved through the integration of active initiators into printing materials. Image via Springer Nature.
    Microfluidic Devices Fabricated via Direct and Indirect Methods
    Microfluidic systems have traditionally relied on soft lithography techniques using polydimethylsiloxane. Additive manufacturing now offers alternatives through both direct printing of fluidic chips and indirect fabrication using 3D printed molds.
    Direct fabrication using SLA, DLP, or inkjet-based systems allows the rapid prototyping of chips with integrated reservoirs and channels. However, achieving sub-100 µm channels requires careful calibration. One group demonstrated channels as small as 18 µm × 20 µm using a customized DLP printer.
    Indirect fabrication relies on printing sacrificial or reusable molds, followed by casting and demolding. PLA, ABS, and resin-based molds are commonly used, depending on whether water-soluble or solvent-dissolvable materials are preferred. These techniques are compatible with PDMS and reduce reliance on photolithography equipment.
    Surface roughness and optical transparency remain concerns. FDM-printed molds often introduce layer artifacts, while uncured resin in SLA methods can leach toxins or inhibit PDMS curing. Some teams address these issues by polishing surfaces post-print or chemically treating molds to improve release characteristics.
    Integration and Future Directions for Microdevices
    3D printed microfluidic devices in biology and chemistry.Image via Springer Nature.
    3D printing is increasingly enabling the integration of structural, electrical, and sensing components into single build processes. Multi-material printers are beginning to produce substrates, conductive paths, and dielectric layers in tandem, although component embedding still requires manual intervention.
    Applications in wearable electronics, flexible sensors, and soft robotics continue to expand. Stretchable conductors printed onto elastomeric backings are being used to simulate mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptors for electronic skin systems. Piezoelectric materials such as BaTiO₃-PVDF composites are under investigation for printed actuators and energy harvesters.
    MEMS fabrication remains constrained by the mechanical limitations of printable materials. Silicon continues to dominate high-performance actuators due to its stiffness and precision. Additive methods are currently better suited for producing packaging, connectors, and sacrificial scaffolds within MEMS systems.
    Multi-photon and light-assisted processes are being explored for producing active devices like microcapacitors and accelerometers. Recent work demonstrated the use of 2PP to fabricate nitrogen-vacancy center–based quantum sensors, capable of detecting thermal and magnetic fluctuations in microscopic environments.
    As materials, resolution, and system integration improve, 3D printing is poised to shift from peripheral use to a central role in microsystem design and production. 
    3D printing micro-nano devices. Image via Springer Nature.
    Ready to discover who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards?
    Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and insights.
    Take the 3DPI Reader Survey — shape the future of AM reporting in under 5 minutes.
    Featured image shows an Overview of 3D printing applications for microelectronic and microfluidic device fabrication. Image via Springer Nature.

    Anyer Tenorio Lara
    Anyer Tenorio Lara is an emerging tech journalist passionate about uncovering the latest advances in technology and innovation. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, Anyer has quickly made a name for himself in the tech community. Anyer's articles aim to make complex subjects accessible and engaging for a broad audience. In addition to his writing, Anyer enjoys participating in industry events and discussions, eager to learn and share knowledge in the dynamic world of technology.
    #mapping #expanding #role #printing #micro
    Mapping the Expanding Role of 3D Printing in Micro and Nano Device Fabrication
    A new review by researchers from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, CETC 54, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen University, and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China surveys the latest developments in 3D printing for microelectronic and microfluidic applications. The paper released on Springer Nature Link highlights how additive manufacturing methods have reached sub-micron precision, allowing the production of devices previously limited to traditional cleanroom fabrication. High-resolution techniques like two-photon polymerization, electrohydrodynamic jet printing, and computed axial lithographyare now being used to create structures with feature sizes down to 100 nanometers. These capabilities have broad implications for biomedical sensors, flexible electronics, and microfluidic systems used in diagnostics and environmental monitoring. Overview of 3D printing applications for microelectronic and microfluidic device fabrication. Image via Springer Nature. Classification of High-Precision Additive Processes Seven categories of additive manufacturing, as defined by the American Society for Testing and Materialsserve as the foundation for modern 3D printing workflows: binder jetting, directed energy deposition, material extrusion, material jetting, powder bed fusion, sheet lamination, and vat photopolymerization. Among these, 2PP provides the finest resolution, enabling the fabrication of nanoscale features for optical communication components and MEMS support structures. Inkjet-based material jetting and direct ink writingallow patterned deposition of conductive or biological materials, including stretchable gels and ionic polymers. Binder jetting, which operates by spraying adhesives onto powdered substrates, is particularly suited for large-volume structures using metals or ceramics with minimal thermal stress. Fused deposition modeling, a form of material extrusion, continues to be widely used for its low cost and compatibility with thermoplastics. Although limited in resolution, it remains practical for building mechanical supports or sacrificial molds in soft lithography. Various micro-scale 3D printing strategies. Image via Springer Nature. 3D Printing in Microelectronics, MEMS, and Sensing Additive manufacturing is now routinely used to fabricate microsensors, microelectromechanical systemactuators, and flexible electronics. Compared to traditional lithographic processes, 3D printing reduces material waste and bypasses the need for masks or etching steps. In one example cited by the review, flexible multi-directional sensors were printed directly onto skin-like substrates using a customized FDM platform. Another case involved a cantilever support for a micro-accelerometer produced via 2PP and coated with conductive materials through evaporation. These examples show how additive techniques can fabricate both support and functional layers with high geometric complexity. MEMS actuators fabricated with additive methods often combine printed scaffolds with conventional micromachining. A 2PP-printed spiral structure was used to house liquid metal in an electrothermal actuator. Separately, FDM was used to print a MEMS switch, combining conductive PLA and polyvinyl alcohol as the sacrificial layer. However, achieving the mechanical precision needed for switching elements remains a barrier for fully integrated use. 3D printing material and preparation methods. Image via Springer Nature. Development of Functional Inks and Composite Materials Microelectronic applications depend on the availability of printable materials with specific electrical, mechanical, or chemical properties. MXene-based conductive inks, metal particle suspensions, and piezoelectric composites are being optimized for use in DIW, inkjet, and light-curing platforms. Researchers have fabricated planar asymmetric micro-supercapacitors using ink composed of nickel sulfide on nitrogen-doped MXene. These devices demonstrate increased voltage windowsand volumetric capacitance, meeting the demands of compact power systems. Other work involves composite hydrogels with ionic conductivity and high tensile stretch, used in flexible biosensing applications. PEDOT:PSS, a common conductive polymer, has been formulated into a high-resolution ink using lyophilization and re-dispersion in photocurable matrices. These formulations are used to create electrode arrays for neural probes and flexible circuits. Multiphoton lithography has also been applied to print complex 3D structures from organic semiconductor resins. Bioelectronic applications are driving the need for biocompatible inks that can perform reliably in wet and dynamic environments. One group incorporated graphene nanoplatelets and carbon nanotubes into ink for multi-jet fusion, producing pressure sensors with high mechanical durability and signal sensitivity. 3D printed electronics achieved through the integration of active initiators into printing materials. Image via Springer Nature. Microfluidic Devices Fabricated via Direct and Indirect Methods Microfluidic systems have traditionally relied on soft lithography techniques using polydimethylsiloxane. Additive manufacturing now offers alternatives through both direct printing of fluidic chips and indirect fabrication using 3D printed molds. Direct fabrication using SLA, DLP, or inkjet-based systems allows the rapid prototyping of chips with integrated reservoirs and channels. However, achieving sub-100 µm channels requires careful calibration. One group demonstrated channels as small as 18 µm × 20 µm using a customized DLP printer. Indirect fabrication relies on printing sacrificial or reusable molds, followed by casting and demolding. PLA, ABS, and resin-based molds are commonly used, depending on whether water-soluble or solvent-dissolvable materials are preferred. These techniques are compatible with PDMS and reduce reliance on photolithography equipment. Surface roughness and optical transparency remain concerns. FDM-printed molds often introduce layer artifacts, while uncured resin in SLA methods can leach toxins or inhibit PDMS curing. Some teams address these issues by polishing surfaces post-print or chemically treating molds to improve release characteristics. Integration and Future Directions for Microdevices 3D printed microfluidic devices in biology and chemistry.Image via Springer Nature. 3D printing is increasingly enabling the integration of structural, electrical, and sensing components into single build processes. Multi-material printers are beginning to produce substrates, conductive paths, and dielectric layers in tandem, although component embedding still requires manual intervention. Applications in wearable electronics, flexible sensors, and soft robotics continue to expand. Stretchable conductors printed onto elastomeric backings are being used to simulate mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptors for electronic skin systems. Piezoelectric materials such as BaTiO₃-PVDF composites are under investigation for printed actuators and energy harvesters. MEMS fabrication remains constrained by the mechanical limitations of printable materials. Silicon continues to dominate high-performance actuators due to its stiffness and precision. Additive methods are currently better suited for producing packaging, connectors, and sacrificial scaffolds within MEMS systems. Multi-photon and light-assisted processes are being explored for producing active devices like microcapacitors and accelerometers. Recent work demonstrated the use of 2PP to fabricate nitrogen-vacancy center–based quantum sensors, capable of detecting thermal and magnetic fluctuations in microscopic environments. As materials, resolution, and system integration improve, 3D printing is poised to shift from peripheral use to a central role in microsystem design and production.  3D printing micro-nano devices. Image via Springer Nature. Ready to discover who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and insights. Take the 3DPI Reader Survey — shape the future of AM reporting in under 5 minutes. Featured image shows an Overview of 3D printing applications for microelectronic and microfluidic device fabrication. Image via Springer Nature. Anyer Tenorio Lara Anyer Tenorio Lara is an emerging tech journalist passionate about uncovering the latest advances in technology and innovation. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, Anyer has quickly made a name for himself in the tech community. Anyer's articles aim to make complex subjects accessible and engaging for a broad audience. In addition to his writing, Anyer enjoys participating in industry events and discussions, eager to learn and share knowledge in the dynamic world of technology. #mapping #expanding #role #printing #micro
    3DPRINTINGINDUSTRY.COM
    Mapping the Expanding Role of 3D Printing in Micro and Nano Device Fabrication
    A new review by researchers from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, CETC 54 (54th Research Institute of Electronics Technology Group Corporation), Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen University, and the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China surveys the latest developments in 3D printing for microelectronic and microfluidic applications. The paper released on Springer Nature Link highlights how additive manufacturing methods have reached sub-micron precision, allowing the production of devices previously limited to traditional cleanroom fabrication. High-resolution techniques like two-photon polymerization (2PP), electrohydrodynamic jet printing, and computed axial lithography (CAL) are now being used to create structures with feature sizes down to 100 nanometers. These capabilities have broad implications for biomedical sensors, flexible electronics, and microfluidic systems used in diagnostics and environmental monitoring. Overview of 3D printing applications for microelectronic and microfluidic device fabrication. Image via Springer Nature. Classification of High-Precision Additive Processes Seven categories of additive manufacturing, as defined by the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) serve as the foundation for modern 3D printing workflows: binder jetting, directed energy deposition (DED), material extrusion (MEX), material jetting, powder bed fusion (PBF), sheet lamination (SHL), and vat photopolymerization (VP). Among these, 2PP provides the finest resolution, enabling the fabrication of nanoscale features for optical communication components and MEMS support structures. Inkjet-based material jetting and direct ink writing (DIW) allow patterned deposition of conductive or biological materials, including stretchable gels and ionic polymers. Binder jetting, which operates by spraying adhesives onto powdered substrates, is particularly suited for large-volume structures using metals or ceramics with minimal thermal stress. Fused deposition modeling, a form of material extrusion, continues to be widely used for its low cost and compatibility with thermoplastics. Although limited in resolution, it remains practical for building mechanical supports or sacrificial molds in soft lithography. Various micro-scale 3D printing strategies. Image via Springer Nature. 3D Printing in Microelectronics, MEMS, and Sensing Additive manufacturing is now routinely used to fabricate microsensors, microelectromechanical system (MEMS) actuators, and flexible electronics. Compared to traditional lithographic processes, 3D printing reduces material waste and bypasses the need for masks or etching steps. In one example cited by the review, flexible multi-directional sensors were printed directly onto skin-like substrates using a customized FDM platform. Another case involved a cantilever support for a micro-accelerometer produced via 2PP and coated with conductive materials through evaporation. These examples show how additive techniques can fabricate both support and functional layers with high geometric complexity. MEMS actuators fabricated with additive methods often combine printed scaffolds with conventional micromachining. A 2PP-printed spiral structure was used to house liquid metal in an electrothermal actuator. Separately, FDM was used to print a MEMS switch, combining conductive PLA and polyvinyl alcohol as the sacrificial layer. However, achieving the mechanical precision needed for switching elements remains a barrier for fully integrated use. 3D printing material and preparation methods. Image via Springer Nature. Development of Functional Inks and Composite Materials Microelectronic applications depend on the availability of printable materials with specific electrical, mechanical, or chemical properties. MXene-based conductive inks, metal particle suspensions, and piezoelectric composites are being optimized for use in DIW, inkjet, and light-curing platforms. Researchers have fabricated planar asymmetric micro-supercapacitors using ink composed of nickel sulfide on nitrogen-doped MXene. These devices demonstrate increased voltage windows (up to 1.5 V) and volumetric capacitance, meeting the demands of compact power systems. Other work involves composite hydrogels with ionic conductivity and high tensile stretch, used in flexible biosensing applications. PEDOT:PSS, a common conductive polymer, has been formulated into a high-resolution ink using lyophilization and re-dispersion in photocurable matrices. These formulations are used to create electrode arrays for neural probes and flexible circuits. Multiphoton lithography has also been applied to print complex 3D structures from organic semiconductor resins. Bioelectronic applications are driving the need for biocompatible inks that can perform reliably in wet and dynamic environments. One group incorporated graphene nanoplatelets and carbon nanotubes into ink for multi-jet fusion, producing pressure sensors with high mechanical durability and signal sensitivity. 3D printed electronics achieved through the integration of active initiators into printing materials. Image via Springer Nature. Microfluidic Devices Fabricated via Direct and Indirect Methods Microfluidic systems have traditionally relied on soft lithography techniques using polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). Additive manufacturing now offers alternatives through both direct printing of fluidic chips and indirect fabrication using 3D printed molds. Direct fabrication using SLA, DLP, or inkjet-based systems allows the rapid prototyping of chips with integrated reservoirs and channels. However, achieving sub-100 µm channels requires careful calibration. One group demonstrated channels as small as 18 µm × 20 µm using a customized DLP printer. Indirect fabrication relies on printing sacrificial or reusable molds, followed by casting and demolding. PLA, ABS, and resin-based molds are commonly used, depending on whether water-soluble or solvent-dissolvable materials are preferred. These techniques are compatible with PDMS and reduce reliance on photolithography equipment. Surface roughness and optical transparency remain concerns. FDM-printed molds often introduce layer artifacts, while uncured resin in SLA methods can leach toxins or inhibit PDMS curing. Some teams address these issues by polishing surfaces post-print or chemically treating molds to improve release characteristics. Integration and Future Directions for Microdevices 3D printed microfluidic devices in biology and chemistry.Image via Springer Nature. 3D printing is increasingly enabling the integration of structural, electrical, and sensing components into single build processes. Multi-material printers are beginning to produce substrates, conductive paths, and dielectric layers in tandem, although component embedding still requires manual intervention. Applications in wearable electronics, flexible sensors, and soft robotics continue to expand. Stretchable conductors printed onto elastomeric backings are being used to simulate mechanoreceptors and thermoreceptors for electronic skin systems. Piezoelectric materials such as BaTiO₃-PVDF composites are under investigation for printed actuators and energy harvesters. MEMS fabrication remains constrained by the mechanical limitations of printable materials. Silicon continues to dominate high-performance actuators due to its stiffness and precision. Additive methods are currently better suited for producing packaging, connectors, and sacrificial scaffolds within MEMS systems. Multi-photon and light-assisted processes are being explored for producing active devices like microcapacitors and accelerometers. Recent work demonstrated the use of 2PP to fabricate nitrogen-vacancy center–based quantum sensors, capable of detecting thermal and magnetic fluctuations in microscopic environments. As materials, resolution, and system integration improve, 3D printing is poised to shift from peripheral use to a central role in microsystem design and production.  3D printing micro-nano devices. Image via Springer Nature. Ready to discover who won the 20243D Printing Industry Awards? Subscribe to the 3D Printing Industry newsletter to stay updated with the latest news and insights. Take the 3DPI Reader Survey — shape the future of AM reporting in under 5 minutes. Featured image shows an Overview of 3D printing applications for microelectronic and microfluidic device fabrication. Image via Springer Nature. Anyer Tenorio Lara Anyer Tenorio Lara is an emerging tech journalist passionate about uncovering the latest advances in technology and innovation. With a sharp eye for detail and a talent for storytelling, Anyer has quickly made a name for himself in the tech community. Anyer's articles aim to make complex subjects accessible and engaging for a broad audience. In addition to his writing, Anyer enjoys participating in industry events and discussions, eager to learn and share knowledge in the dynamic world of technology.
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  • How libraries are becoming launchpads for music careers  

    In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and smartphones, one of the most overlooked engines of economic growth sits quietly at the heart of every neighborhood: the public library. 

    Gone are the days when libraries were sanctuaries reserved for only reading and research. Today, they are being reimagined as dynamic hubs for workforce development, creative sector support, and cultural exchange. Across the country, these reservoirs of knowledge are evolving into digital and physical beacons of community resilience. 

    Local access, global reach: A case study in artist empowerment 

    In Huntsville, where I serve as the city’s first music officer, we’ve partnered with our public library system to develop a multifunctional creative hub—with music at its core. A primary pillar of our collaboration is Blast Music, a digital streaming platform designed to showcase local talent. It’s a model other cities can and should replicate. 

    Through the Blast program, artists are paid, promoted, and added to a curated library collection—offering not only exposure, but bona fide industry credentials. Over 100 local artists are currently featured on the platform, and we will welcome up to 50 additional artists into the program annually. 

    The ripple effect of Blast is real. The free service empowers local listeners to discover homegrown talent while giving musicians tools to grow their fan base and attract industry attention. Perhaps most importantly, Blast provides emerging artists with resume-worthy recognition—essential for building sustainable careers in a tough industry. 

    But Blast isn’t just about digital reach—it’s embedded in Huntsville’s cultural DNA. From artist showcases like the Ladies of Blast event at the Orion Amphitheater, to community events like Hear to Be Seen, to stages designated exclusively for Blast artist performances at Camp to Amp, PorchFest, and more, Blast is bringing music into public spaces and cultivating civic pride. That’s the kind of community infrastructure that libraries are uniquely equipped to deliver. 

    There’s no such thing as too much visibility, and even artists with international acclaim see value in the platform. Huntsville native Kim Tibbs, a vocalist, songwriter, Alabama Music Hall of Fame honoree and UK chart-topper, submitted her album The Science of Completion Volume I to Blast—not only for more exposure, but to mentor and support the next generation of artists in her hometown.  

    Libraries as talent incubators 

    Huntsville is part of a broader national trend. In cities like Chicago, Nashville, and Austin, libraries are integrating creative labs, media production studios, and music education into their core services—functioning as public-sector incubators for the creative economy. 

    As technology continues to reshape traditional jobs, libraries are well-positioned to bridge skill gaps and fuel the rise of creative economies, including the vital but often overlooked non-performance roles in the music industry. 

    Huntsville is doubling down on this approach. We’re investing millions into programs that bring interactive music technology workshops to teens at the local library—focusing on hands-on training in production, recording, and audio engineering. With professional equipment, studio spaces, and expert instruction, we’re preparing the next generation for careers both onstage and behind the scenes. 

    Local industry is stepping up too. Hear Technologies, a global leader in sound and AV production, has been designing cutting-edge audio devices for years. They’re now part of a dynamic team collaborating with city leaders to help develop the library’s music maker space, nurture new talent and accelerate our region’s creative growth. 

    This matters now, more than ever 

    Libraries have always been entry points for education, employment, and exploration. But today, they’re more than just information access points—they are gateways to opportunity and launchpads for industries that define the future. By utilizing public space and collaborating with local talent, libraries can become platforms for economic mobility and cultural innovation. This investment isn’t a feel-good gesture. It’s a smart, strategic move for any city building a future that works—for everyone. 

    The playlist is simple: Invest in creative ecosystems, embed them in trusted community institutions like public libraries, and treat music as critical infrastructure.  

    Matt Mandrella is music officer for the City of Huntsville, Alabama. 
    #how #libraries #are #becoming #launchpads
    How libraries are becoming launchpads for music careers  
    In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and smartphones, one of the most overlooked engines of economic growth sits quietly at the heart of every neighborhood: the public library.  Gone are the days when libraries were sanctuaries reserved for only reading and research. Today, they are being reimagined as dynamic hubs for workforce development, creative sector support, and cultural exchange. Across the country, these reservoirs of knowledge are evolving into digital and physical beacons of community resilience.  Local access, global reach: A case study in artist empowerment  In Huntsville, where I serve as the city’s first music officer, we’ve partnered with our public library system to develop a multifunctional creative hub—with music at its core. A primary pillar of our collaboration is Blast Music, a digital streaming platform designed to showcase local talent. It’s a model other cities can and should replicate.  Through the Blast program, artists are paid, promoted, and added to a curated library collection—offering not only exposure, but bona fide industry credentials. Over 100 local artists are currently featured on the platform, and we will welcome up to 50 additional artists into the program annually.  The ripple effect of Blast is real. The free service empowers local listeners to discover homegrown talent while giving musicians tools to grow their fan base and attract industry attention. Perhaps most importantly, Blast provides emerging artists with resume-worthy recognition—essential for building sustainable careers in a tough industry.  But Blast isn’t just about digital reach—it’s embedded in Huntsville’s cultural DNA. From artist showcases like the Ladies of Blast event at the Orion Amphitheater, to community events like Hear to Be Seen, to stages designated exclusively for Blast artist performances at Camp to Amp, PorchFest, and more, Blast is bringing music into public spaces and cultivating civic pride. That’s the kind of community infrastructure that libraries are uniquely equipped to deliver.  There’s no such thing as too much visibility, and even artists with international acclaim see value in the platform. Huntsville native Kim Tibbs, a vocalist, songwriter, Alabama Music Hall of Fame honoree and UK chart-topper, submitted her album The Science of Completion Volume I to Blast—not only for more exposure, but to mentor and support the next generation of artists in her hometown.   Libraries as talent incubators  Huntsville is part of a broader national trend. In cities like Chicago, Nashville, and Austin, libraries are integrating creative labs, media production studios, and music education into their core services—functioning as public-sector incubators for the creative economy.  As technology continues to reshape traditional jobs, libraries are well-positioned to bridge skill gaps and fuel the rise of creative economies, including the vital but often overlooked non-performance roles in the music industry.  Huntsville is doubling down on this approach. We’re investing millions into programs that bring interactive music technology workshops to teens at the local library—focusing on hands-on training in production, recording, and audio engineering. With professional equipment, studio spaces, and expert instruction, we’re preparing the next generation for careers both onstage and behind the scenes.  Local industry is stepping up too. Hear Technologies, a global leader in sound and AV production, has been designing cutting-edge audio devices for years. They’re now part of a dynamic team collaborating with city leaders to help develop the library’s music maker space, nurture new talent and accelerate our region’s creative growth.  This matters now, more than ever  Libraries have always been entry points for education, employment, and exploration. But today, they’re more than just information access points—they are gateways to opportunity and launchpads for industries that define the future. By utilizing public space and collaborating with local talent, libraries can become platforms for economic mobility and cultural innovation. This investment isn’t a feel-good gesture. It’s a smart, strategic move for any city building a future that works—for everyone.  The playlist is simple: Invest in creative ecosystems, embed them in trusted community institutions like public libraries, and treat music as critical infrastructure.   Matt Mandrella is music officer for the City of Huntsville, Alabama.  #how #libraries #are #becoming #launchpads
    WWW.FASTCOMPANY.COM
    How libraries are becoming launchpads for music careers  
    In an era dominated by artificial intelligence and smartphones, one of the most overlooked engines of economic growth sits quietly at the heart of every neighborhood: the public library.  Gone are the days when libraries were sanctuaries reserved for only reading and research. Today, they are being reimagined as dynamic hubs for workforce development, creative sector support, and cultural exchange. Across the country, these reservoirs of knowledge are evolving into digital and physical beacons of community resilience.  Local access, global reach: A case study in artist empowerment  In Huntsville, where I serve as the city’s first music officer, we’ve partnered with our public library system to develop a multifunctional creative hub—with music at its core. A primary pillar of our collaboration is Blast Music, a digital streaming platform designed to showcase local talent. It’s a model other cities can and should replicate.  Through the Blast program, artists are paid, promoted, and added to a curated library collection—offering not only exposure, but bona fide industry credentials. Over 100 local artists are currently featured on the platform, and we will welcome up to 50 additional artists into the program annually.  The ripple effect of Blast is real. The free service empowers local listeners to discover homegrown talent while giving musicians tools to grow their fan base and attract industry attention. Perhaps most importantly, Blast provides emerging artists with resume-worthy recognition—essential for building sustainable careers in a tough industry.  But Blast isn’t just about digital reach—it’s embedded in Huntsville’s cultural DNA. From artist showcases like the Ladies of Blast event at the Orion Amphitheater, to community events like Hear to Be Seen (a portrait exhibition of Blast musicians), to stages designated exclusively for Blast artist performances at Camp to Amp, PorchFest, and more, Blast is bringing music into public spaces and cultivating civic pride. That’s the kind of community infrastructure that libraries are uniquely equipped to deliver.  There’s no such thing as too much visibility, and even artists with international acclaim see value in the platform. Huntsville native Kim Tibbs, a vocalist, songwriter, Alabama Music Hall of Fame honoree and UK chart-topper, submitted her album The Science of Completion Volume I to Blast—not only for more exposure, but to mentor and support the next generation of artists in her hometown.   Libraries as talent incubators  Huntsville is part of a broader national trend. In cities like Chicago, Nashville, and Austin, libraries are integrating creative labs, media production studios, and music education into their core services—functioning as public-sector incubators for the creative economy.  As technology continues to reshape traditional jobs, libraries are well-positioned to bridge skill gaps and fuel the rise of creative economies, including the vital but often overlooked non-performance roles in the music industry.  Huntsville is doubling down on this approach. We’re investing millions into programs that bring interactive music technology workshops to teens at the local library—focusing on hands-on training in production, recording, and audio engineering. With professional equipment, studio spaces, and expert instruction, we’re preparing the next generation for careers both onstage and behind the scenes.  Local industry is stepping up too. Hear Technologies, a global leader in sound and AV production, has been designing cutting-edge audio devices for years. They’re now part of a dynamic team collaborating with city leaders to help develop the library’s music maker space, nurture new talent and accelerate our region’s creative growth.  This matters now, more than ever  Libraries have always been entry points for education, employment, and exploration. But today, they’re more than just information access points—they are gateways to opportunity and launchpads for industries that define the future. By utilizing public space and collaborating with local talent, libraries can become platforms for economic mobility and cultural innovation. This investment isn’t a feel-good gesture. It’s a smart, strategic move for any city building a future that works—for everyone.  The playlist is simple: Invest in creative ecosystems, embed them in trusted community institutions like public libraries, and treat music as critical infrastructure.   Matt Mandrella is music officer for the City of Huntsville, Alabama. 
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  • Corsair Showcases Innovative PC Hardware And Peripherals At Computex; Powerboard Takes The Limelight

    From blazing-fast SSDs to innovative PC cases, Corsair showed some fantastic offerings at the Computex event.
    Corsair Unveils PCI-E 5.0 SSDs, High-Performance RAM, Refreshed PSU Lineup, Hydro X Cooling Solutions, Cases, and New Peripherals
    Corsair had some really creative products for the consumer PC segment at Computex. The company not only showcased newer lineups for components and peripherals but also brought some convenient stuff that we hadn't ever seen before.

    2 of 9

    Starting with the PC components, Corsair introduced new PCI-E 5.0 and external SSDs. These include the MP600 Elite and MP600 PRO LPX for PS5, MP700 PRO and MP700 Elite for high-performance PCs, MP600 Mini and MP600 Micro for compact systems, and EX400U and EX100U external SSDs.

    2 of 9

    We also saw newer DDR5 memories in the Vengeance lineup alongside WS DDR5 RDIMM and SODIMM DDR5 for laptops. The Corsair memory lineup also received a refreshed Dominator Titanium series, new CUDIMM, and some RGB DDR5 memories. Corsair also showcased its Custom LAB DDR5 editions with gorgeous skins.

    2 of 9

    Corsair has also upgraded its PSU lineup by introducing the popular RM series, budget CX series, and high-performance HX series. These include 650W to 1500W power supply units for PC builds, and some of them are equipped with dual 12V-2x6 connectors for the latest high-end GPUs.

    2 of 9

    Coming to the PC cases, there are some really innovative options, like the FRAME 4500X, which comes with a panoramic front and side glass panel, high customizations, and dual 360mm radiator support; the AIR 5400 mid-tower chassis, which focuses on high airflow and has a triple chamber design, and the FRAME 50000 chassis that boasts a minimalistic design with spacious interior and huge vents for airflow. However, the Open Frame Concept was an excellent solution for building a quick test bench, which offers vertical and horizontal orientations, a removable PSU shroud, and a small footprint that does everything well without needing too much space.

    2 of 9

    The FRAME 40000 Prototype was one of the most notable innovations by Corsair, which brought swappable frame parts. The case introduces the "Powerboard" concept that replaces the regular motherboard plate inside the case and helps power the whole PC through multiple available connectors for all kinds of components. It's like an alternative to motherboards with connectors at the back, but you will have a lot of connectors to power fans and stuff, which can come in handy.

    2 of 9

    Corsair also introduced its new Hydro X lineup, featuring the XC7 RGB Elite and Elite LCD CPU blocks, XD6 RGB Elite and Elite LCD water reservoirs/pumps, and XG5 RGB SO-series GPU water block. It also introduced new 360mm Nautilus and 420mm Titan AIOs for high-performance cooling.

    2 of 9

    Coming to the peripherals section, Corsair unveiled the Web Hub and highly customizable MAKR 75 DIY keyboard for gamers. The headset lineup received several new Virtuoso series, VOID series, and HS series headsets for high-fidelity sound quality.

    Deal of the Day
    #corsair #showcases #innovative #hardware #peripherals
    Corsair Showcases Innovative PC Hardware And Peripherals At Computex; Powerboard Takes The Limelight
    From blazing-fast SSDs to innovative PC cases, Corsair showed some fantastic offerings at the Computex event. Corsair Unveils PCI-E 5.0 SSDs, High-Performance RAM, Refreshed PSU Lineup, Hydro X Cooling Solutions, Cases, and New Peripherals Corsair had some really creative products for the consumer PC segment at Computex. The company not only showcased newer lineups for components and peripherals but also brought some convenient stuff that we hadn't ever seen before. 2 of 9 Starting with the PC components, Corsair introduced new PCI-E 5.0 and external SSDs. These include the MP600 Elite and MP600 PRO LPX for PS5, MP700 PRO and MP700 Elite for high-performance PCs, MP600 Mini and MP600 Micro for compact systems, and EX400U and EX100U external SSDs. 2 of 9 We also saw newer DDR5 memories in the Vengeance lineup alongside WS DDR5 RDIMM and SODIMM DDR5 for laptops. The Corsair memory lineup also received a refreshed Dominator Titanium series, new CUDIMM, and some RGB DDR5 memories. Corsair also showcased its Custom LAB DDR5 editions with gorgeous skins. 2 of 9 Corsair has also upgraded its PSU lineup by introducing the popular RM series, budget CX series, and high-performance HX series. These include 650W to 1500W power supply units for PC builds, and some of them are equipped with dual 12V-2x6 connectors for the latest high-end GPUs. 2 of 9 Coming to the PC cases, there are some really innovative options, like the FRAME 4500X, which comes with a panoramic front and side glass panel, high customizations, and dual 360mm radiator support; the AIR 5400 mid-tower chassis, which focuses on high airflow and has a triple chamber design, and the FRAME 50000 chassis that boasts a minimalistic design with spacious interior and huge vents for airflow. However, the Open Frame Concept was an excellent solution for building a quick test bench, which offers vertical and horizontal orientations, a removable PSU shroud, and a small footprint that does everything well without needing too much space. 2 of 9 The FRAME 40000 Prototype was one of the most notable innovations by Corsair, which brought swappable frame parts. The case introduces the "Powerboard" concept that replaces the regular motherboard plate inside the case and helps power the whole PC through multiple available connectors for all kinds of components. It's like an alternative to motherboards with connectors at the back, but you will have a lot of connectors to power fans and stuff, which can come in handy. 2 of 9 Corsair also introduced its new Hydro X lineup, featuring the XC7 RGB Elite and Elite LCD CPU blocks, XD6 RGB Elite and Elite LCD water reservoirs/pumps, and XG5 RGB SO-series GPU water block. It also introduced new 360mm Nautilus and 420mm Titan AIOs for high-performance cooling. 2 of 9 Coming to the peripherals section, Corsair unveiled the Web Hub and highly customizable MAKR 75 DIY keyboard for gamers. The headset lineup received several new Virtuoso series, VOID series, and HS series headsets for high-fidelity sound quality. Deal of the Day #corsair #showcases #innovative #hardware #peripherals
    WCCFTECH.COM
    Corsair Showcases Innovative PC Hardware And Peripherals At Computex; Powerboard Takes The Limelight
    From blazing-fast SSDs to innovative PC cases, Corsair showed some fantastic offerings at the Computex event. Corsair Unveils PCI-E 5.0 SSDs, High-Performance RAM, Refreshed PSU Lineup, Hydro X Cooling Solutions, Cases, and New Peripherals Corsair had some really creative products for the consumer PC segment at Computex. The company not only showcased newer lineups for components and peripherals but also brought some convenient stuff that we hadn't ever seen before. 2 of 9 Starting with the PC components, Corsair introduced new PCI-E 5.0 and external SSDs. These include the MP600 Elite and MP600 PRO LPX for PS5, MP700 PRO and MP700 Elite for high-performance PCs, MP600 Mini and MP600 Micro for compact systems, and EX400U and EX100U external SSDs. 2 of 9 We also saw newer DDR5 memories in the Vengeance lineup alongside WS DDR5 RDIMM and SODIMM DDR5 for laptops. The Corsair memory lineup also received a refreshed Dominator Titanium series, new CUDIMM, and some RGB DDR5 memories. Corsair also showcased its Custom LAB DDR5 editions with gorgeous skins. 2 of 9 Corsair has also upgraded its PSU lineup by introducing the popular RM series, budget CX series, and high-performance HX series. These include 650W to 1500W power supply units for PC builds, and some of them are equipped with dual 12V-2x6 connectors for the latest high-end GPUs. 2 of 9 Coming to the PC cases, there are some really innovative options, like the FRAME 4500X, which comes with a panoramic front and side glass panel, high customizations, and dual 360mm radiator support; the AIR 5400 mid-tower chassis, which focuses on high airflow and has a triple chamber design, and the FRAME 50000 chassis that boasts a minimalistic design with spacious interior and huge vents for airflow. However, the Open Frame Concept was an excellent solution for building a quick test bench, which offers vertical and horizontal orientations, a removable PSU shroud, and a small footprint that does everything well without needing too much space. 2 of 9 The FRAME 40000 Prototype was one of the most notable innovations by Corsair, which brought swappable frame parts. The case introduces the "Powerboard" concept that replaces the regular motherboard plate inside the case and helps power the whole PC through multiple available connectors for all kinds of components. It's like an alternative to motherboards with connectors at the back, but you will have a lot of connectors to power fans and stuff, which can come in handy. 2 of 9 Corsair also introduced its new Hydro X lineup, featuring the XC7 RGB Elite and Elite LCD CPU blocks, XD6 RGB Elite and Elite LCD water reservoirs/pumps, and XG5 RGB SO-series GPU water block. It also introduced new 360mm Nautilus and 420mm Titan AIOs for high-performance cooling. 2 of 9 Coming to the peripherals section, Corsair unveiled the Web Hub and highly customizable MAKR 75 DIY keyboard for gamers. The headset lineup received several new Virtuoso series, VOID series, and HS series headsets for high-fidelity sound quality. Deal of the Day
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  • NOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ as Lutnick Has Left Contracts Unsigned

    May 20, 20255 min readNOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ amid Backlog of Unsigned ContractsA NOAA official says that “everything has ground to a halt” at the agency as staffers have waited for Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to review more than 200 agreementsBy Scott Waldman & E&E News Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | A growing backlog of hundreds of unsigned NOAA contracts has slowed agency operations to a crawl — so much so that even Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch ally of the Trump administration, has raised concerns about the gridlock.The bottleneck is due largely to one man: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose portfolio includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After taking office in February, Lutnick insisted that he personally review any contract in excess of Intended as an attempt to identify waste and redundancy, the policy instead has sown chaos at the nation’s preeminent climate and weather agency, say former and current NOAA officials.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.More than 200 NOAA contracts — including one aimed at helping local communities prepare for extreme weather events — are now stuck in limbo, waiting for Lutnick to make a decision. The impasse has forced NOAA to furlough employees, and it has created a work environment where NOAA staffers spend much of their time trying to justify their work — rather than doing it, they say.“Everything has ground to a halt,” said one NOAA official who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “We prepare briefings and fill out new forms, nothing is addressed until the very last minute, stress and urgency is very high.”The NOAA contracts that do make it through the wicket often are done at the eleventh hour, such as one designed to ensure two polar weather satellites receive the flight software updates they need. Others languish for days or weeks beyond their expiration before any action is taken.Both Cruz and a second NOAA official, who also was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal, say Lutnick typically reviews about two dozen contracts a week — a tiny fraction of the total.And Cruz warned the backlog could get worse — and cause trouble in his home state of Texas.“NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year,” said the Republican lawmaker at a Senate hearing earlier this month.“These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessment to janitorial services,” Cruz said. He added that a data center at Texas A&M University was shut down for days, “depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.”Cruz's office did not respond to requests for further comment.Commerce Department officials did not make Lutnick available for an interview, nor did they respond to a list of questions from POLITICO’s E&E News. But Kristen Eichamer, a Commerce spokeswoman, defended the agency’s approach in a statement.“NOAA is focused on modernizing the department by implementing cutting-edge modern technology,” Eichamer said. “We are immersed in NOAA’s mission-critical services and this administration will continue on delivering for the American people.”Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said it’s perfectly reasonable for administration officials to review outside contracts to ensure they are an effective use of taxpayer money — especially if they cost millions of dollars.But he questioned whether it made sense for Lutnick to review every NOAA contract that exceeded the mark, especially if he can’t keep pace with the paperwork. NOAA operations rely on a significant number of contractors, he noted.“The agency ceases and stops operations if the contracts are stuck and so that's what you're starting to see,” Spinrad said.He said too that Lutnick’s policy might be sending the wrong message to NOAA employees.“There's an inherent distrust in this, too, if you don't trust your staff to be making the right decisions, you start doing that,” Spinrad said.To be sure, Lutnick isn’t doing it all on his own.To even land on Lutnick’s desk, NOAA contracts must first go through an approval process led in part by Keegan McLaughlin, a former Temple University student who worked as a food hall monitor last year and lists his Eagle Scout award on his LinkedIn résumé.According to internal documents obtained by E&E News, NOAA officials who want to renew outside contracts typically must make their pitch to McLaughlin and Bryton Shang, who was part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiencyoperation championed by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and Trump ally.NOAA officials — many with decades of government experience — have been asked to pitch their requests in the form of a slide show or to write a few bullet points, the documents show.“Keegan and Bryton will ask questions and make a ‘next steps’ decision at the end of the meeting, including requesting any follow-up needed,” the document states.McLaughlin and Shang reject some contracts, but any they do approve go to Lutnick’s desk for a final sign-off, according to one current NOAA official.And that’s where they sit.The contracts currently in limbo run the gamut. One has to do with shoreline mapping. Another deals with flood inundation modeling and networks for tsunami warning buoys. Others encompass internet maintenance that ensure key weather data can be distributed during critical events.Though Lutnick promised to keep NOAA intact during his Senate confirmation hearing in January, he hasn’t engaged much with the agency in his short tenure.Part of this is by design: NOAA composes only a piece of the Commerce secretary’s portfolio. Other divisions of Commerce include the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.And Lutnick has taken on other responsibilities too. In recent weeks, he has been a mouthpiece for the Trump administration’s push to implement new tariffs on foreign goods. And he recently joined President Donald Trump on part of his tour of the Middle East.When Lutnick does get a chance to review NOAA contracts, agency officials say his default setting is to either reject them — or demand partial cuts to the ones he does approve.Also notable: The paralysis created by the contract delays is separate from the Trump White House budget proposal to effectively break up and dismantle NOAA.Taken together, it’s a problematic mix, said Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator, not just because potentially vital programs could be cut, but because the officials making those decisions often lack the institutional knowledge to understand the consequences.“If people don't know the history and don't understand the rules and regulations with respect to how you acquire things with contrasts, they're going to make mistakes,” he said. “And so I think the probability of mistakes is going up when you have inexperienced people doing this kind of thing.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
    #noaa #has #ground #halt #lutnick
    NOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ as Lutnick Has Left Contracts Unsigned
    May 20, 20255 min readNOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ amid Backlog of Unsigned ContractsA NOAA official says that “everything has ground to a halt” at the agency as staffers have waited for Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to review more than 200 agreementsBy Scott Waldman & E&E News Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | A growing backlog of hundreds of unsigned NOAA contracts has slowed agency operations to a crawl — so much so that even Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch ally of the Trump administration, has raised concerns about the gridlock.The bottleneck is due largely to one man: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose portfolio includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After taking office in February, Lutnick insisted that he personally review any contract in excess of Intended as an attempt to identify waste and redundancy, the policy instead has sown chaos at the nation’s preeminent climate and weather agency, say former and current NOAA officials.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.More than 200 NOAA contracts — including one aimed at helping local communities prepare for extreme weather events — are now stuck in limbo, waiting for Lutnick to make a decision. The impasse has forced NOAA to furlough employees, and it has created a work environment where NOAA staffers spend much of their time trying to justify their work — rather than doing it, they say.“Everything has ground to a halt,” said one NOAA official who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “We prepare briefings and fill out new forms, nothing is addressed until the very last minute, stress and urgency is very high.”The NOAA contracts that do make it through the wicket often are done at the eleventh hour, such as one designed to ensure two polar weather satellites receive the flight software updates they need. Others languish for days or weeks beyond their expiration before any action is taken.Both Cruz and a second NOAA official, who also was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal, say Lutnick typically reviews about two dozen contracts a week — a tiny fraction of the total.And Cruz warned the backlog could get worse — and cause trouble in his home state of Texas.“NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year,” said the Republican lawmaker at a Senate hearing earlier this month.“These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessment to janitorial services,” Cruz said. He added that a data center at Texas A&M University was shut down for days, “depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.”Cruz's office did not respond to requests for further comment.Commerce Department officials did not make Lutnick available for an interview, nor did they respond to a list of questions from POLITICO’s E&E News. But Kristen Eichamer, a Commerce spokeswoman, defended the agency’s approach in a statement.“NOAA is focused on modernizing the department by implementing cutting-edge modern technology,” Eichamer said. “We are immersed in NOAA’s mission-critical services and this administration will continue on delivering for the American people.”Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said it’s perfectly reasonable for administration officials to review outside contracts to ensure they are an effective use of taxpayer money — especially if they cost millions of dollars.But he questioned whether it made sense for Lutnick to review every NOAA contract that exceeded the mark, especially if he can’t keep pace with the paperwork. NOAA operations rely on a significant number of contractors, he noted.“The agency ceases and stops operations if the contracts are stuck and so that's what you're starting to see,” Spinrad said.He said too that Lutnick’s policy might be sending the wrong message to NOAA employees.“There's an inherent distrust in this, too, if you don't trust your staff to be making the right decisions, you start doing that,” Spinrad said.To be sure, Lutnick isn’t doing it all on his own.To even land on Lutnick’s desk, NOAA contracts must first go through an approval process led in part by Keegan McLaughlin, a former Temple University student who worked as a food hall monitor last year and lists his Eagle Scout award on his LinkedIn résumé.According to internal documents obtained by E&E News, NOAA officials who want to renew outside contracts typically must make their pitch to McLaughlin and Bryton Shang, who was part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiencyoperation championed by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and Trump ally.NOAA officials — many with decades of government experience — have been asked to pitch their requests in the form of a slide show or to write a few bullet points, the documents show.“Keegan and Bryton will ask questions and make a ‘next steps’ decision at the end of the meeting, including requesting any follow-up needed,” the document states.McLaughlin and Shang reject some contracts, but any they do approve go to Lutnick’s desk for a final sign-off, according to one current NOAA official.And that’s where they sit.The contracts currently in limbo run the gamut. One has to do with shoreline mapping. Another deals with flood inundation modeling and networks for tsunami warning buoys. Others encompass internet maintenance that ensure key weather data can be distributed during critical events.Though Lutnick promised to keep NOAA intact during his Senate confirmation hearing in January, he hasn’t engaged much with the agency in his short tenure.Part of this is by design: NOAA composes only a piece of the Commerce secretary’s portfolio. Other divisions of Commerce include the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.And Lutnick has taken on other responsibilities too. In recent weeks, he has been a mouthpiece for the Trump administration’s push to implement new tariffs on foreign goods. And he recently joined President Donald Trump on part of his tour of the Middle East.When Lutnick does get a chance to review NOAA contracts, agency officials say his default setting is to either reject them — or demand partial cuts to the ones he does approve.Also notable: The paralysis created by the contract delays is separate from the Trump White House budget proposal to effectively break up and dismantle NOAA.Taken together, it’s a problematic mix, said Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator, not just because potentially vital programs could be cut, but because the officials making those decisions often lack the institutional knowledge to understand the consequences.“If people don't know the history and don't understand the rules and regulations with respect to how you acquire things with contrasts, they're going to make mistakes,” he said. “And so I think the probability of mistakes is going up when you have inexperienced people doing this kind of thing.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals. #noaa #has #ground #halt #lutnick
    WWW.SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM
    NOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ as Lutnick Has Left Contracts Unsigned
    May 20, 20255 min readNOAA Has ‘Ground to a Halt’ amid Backlog of Unsigned ContractsA NOAA official says that “everything has ground to a halt” at the agency as staffers have waited for Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick to review more than 200 agreementsBy Scott Waldman & E&E News Howard Lutnick, US commerce secretary, during an executive order signing in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, April 23, 2025. Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | A growing backlog of hundreds of unsigned NOAA contracts has slowed agency operations to a crawl — so much so that even Sen. Ted Cruz, a staunch ally of the Trump administration, has raised concerns about the gridlock.The bottleneck is due largely to one man: Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, whose portfolio includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. After taking office in February, Lutnick insisted that he personally review any contract in excess of $100,000.Intended as an attempt to identify waste and redundancy, the policy instead has sown chaos at the nation’s preeminent climate and weather agency, say former and current NOAA officials.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.More than 200 NOAA contracts — including one aimed at helping local communities prepare for extreme weather events — are now stuck in limbo, waiting for Lutnick to make a decision. The impasse has forced NOAA to furlough employees, and it has created a work environment where NOAA staffers spend much of their time trying to justify their work — rather than doing it, they say.“Everything has ground to a halt,” said one NOAA official who was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal. “We prepare briefings and fill out new forms, nothing is addressed until the very last minute (or later), stress and urgency is very high.”The NOAA contracts that do make it through the wicket often are done at the eleventh hour, such as one designed to ensure two polar weather satellites receive the flight software updates they need. Others languish for days or weeks beyond their expiration before any action is taken.Both Cruz and a second NOAA official, who also was granted anonymity for fear of reprisal, say Lutnick typically reviews about two dozen contracts a week — a tiny fraction of the total.And Cruz warned the backlog could get worse — and cause trouble in his home state of Texas.“NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year,” said the Republican lawmaker at a Senate hearing earlier this month.“These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessment to janitorial services,” Cruz said. He added that a data center at Texas A&M University was shut down for days, “depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.”Cruz's office did not respond to requests for further comment.Commerce Department officials did not make Lutnick available for an interview, nor did they respond to a list of questions from POLITICO’s E&E News. But Kristen Eichamer, a Commerce spokeswoman, defended the agency’s approach in a statement.“NOAA is focused on modernizing the department by implementing cutting-edge modern technology,” Eichamer said. “We are immersed in NOAA’s mission-critical services and this administration will continue on delivering for the American people.”Former NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad said it’s perfectly reasonable for administration officials to review outside contracts to ensure they are an effective use of taxpayer money — especially if they cost millions of dollars.But he questioned whether it made sense for Lutnick to review every NOAA contract that exceeded the $100,000 mark, especially if he can’t keep pace with the paperwork. NOAA operations rely on a significant number of contractors, he noted.“The agency ceases and stops operations if the contracts are stuck and so that's what you're starting to see,” Spinrad said.He said too that Lutnick’s policy might be sending the wrong message to NOAA employees.“There's an inherent distrust in this, too, if you don't trust your staff to be making the right decisions, you start doing that,” Spinrad said.To be sure, Lutnick isn’t doing it all on his own.To even land on Lutnick’s desk, NOAA contracts must first go through an approval process led in part by Keegan McLaughlin, a former Temple University student who worked as a food hall monitor last year and lists his Eagle Scout award on his LinkedIn résumé.According to internal documents obtained by E&E News, NOAA officials who want to renew outside contracts typically must make their pitch to McLaughlin and Bryton Shang, who was part of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operation championed by Elon Musk, the tech billionaire and Trump ally.NOAA officials — many with decades of government experience — have been asked to pitch their requests in the form of a slide show or to write a few bullet points, the documents show.“Keegan and Bryton will ask questions and make a ‘next steps’ decision at the end of the meeting, including requesting any follow-up needed (including needing the program manager to request another meeting),” the document states.McLaughlin and Shang reject some contracts, but any they do approve go to Lutnick’s desk for a final sign-off, according to one current NOAA official.And that’s where they sit.The contracts currently in limbo run the gamut. One has to do with shoreline mapping. Another deals with flood inundation modeling and networks for tsunami warning buoys. Others encompass internet maintenance that ensure key weather data can be distributed during critical events.Though Lutnick promised to keep NOAA intact during his Senate confirmation hearing in January, he hasn’t engaged much with the agency in his short tenure.Part of this is by design: NOAA composes only a piece of the Commerce secretary’s portfolio. Other divisions of Commerce include the Census Bureau, the Patent and Trademark Office and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.And Lutnick has taken on other responsibilities too. In recent weeks, he has been a mouthpiece for the Trump administration’s push to implement new tariffs on foreign goods. And he recently joined President Donald Trump on part of his tour of the Middle East.When Lutnick does get a chance to review NOAA contracts, agency officials say his default setting is to either reject them — or demand partial cuts to the ones he does approve.Also notable: The paralysis created by the contract delays is separate from the Trump White House budget proposal to effectively break up and dismantle NOAA.Taken together, it’s a problematic mix, said Spinrad, the former NOAA administrator, not just because potentially vital programs could be cut, but because the officials making those decisions often lack the institutional knowledge to understand the consequences.“If people don't know the history and don't understand the rules and regulations with respect to how you acquire things with contrasts, they're going to make mistakes,” he said. “And so I think the probability of mistakes is going up when you have inexperienced people doing this kind of thing.”Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
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  • The data center boom in the desert

    In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.  This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future,” on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny.  Switch, a data center company based in Las Vegas, says the full build-out of its campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center could exceed seven million square feet.EMILY NAJERA The full scale and potential environmental impacts of the developments aren’t known, because the footprint, energy needs, and water requirements are often closely guarded corporate secrets. Most of the companies didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review, or declined to provide additional information about the projects.  But there’s “a whole lot of construction going on,” says Kris Thompson, who served as the longtime project manager for the industrial center before stepping down late last year. “The last number I heard was 13 million square feet under construction right now, which is massive.”
    Indeed, it’s the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings laid out flat. In addition, public filings from NV Energy, the state’s near-monopoly utility, reveal that a dozen data-center projects, mostly in this area, have requested nearly six gigawatts of electricity capacity within the next decade.  That would make the greater Reno area—the biggest little city in the world—one of the largest data-center markets around the globe.
    It would also require expanding the state’s power sector by about 40%, all for a single industry in an explosive growth stage that may, or may not, prove sustainable. The energy needs, in turn, suggest those projects could consume billions of gallons of water per year, according to an analysis conducted for this story.  Construction crews are busy building data centers throughout the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA The build-out of a dense cluster of energy and water-hungry data centers in a small stretch of the nation’s driest state, where climate change is driving up temperatures faster than anywhere else in the country, has begun to raise alarms among water experts, environmental groups, and residents. That includes members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose namesake water body lies within their reservation and marks the end point of the Truckee River, the region’s main source of water. Much of Nevada has suffered through severe drought conditions for years, farmers and communities are drawing down many of the state’s groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be refilled, and global warming is sucking more and more moisture out of the region’s streams, shrubs, and soils. “Telling entities that they can come in and stick more straws in the ground for data centers is raising a lot of questions about sound management,” says Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that works to protect water resources throughout Nevada and Utah.  “We just don’t want to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog,” he later added, “where this demand for data centers is driving water policy.” Luring data centers In the late 1850s, the mountains southeast of Reno began enticing prospectors from across the country, who hoped to strike silver or gold in the famed Comstock Lode. But Storey County had few residents or economic prospects by the late 1990s, around the time when Don Roger Norman, a media-shy real estate speculator, spotted a new opportunity in the sagebrush-covered hills. 
    He began buying up tens of thousands of acres of land for tens of millions of dollars and lining up development approvals to lure industrial projects to what became the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. His partners included Lance Gilman, a cowboy-hat-wearing real estate broker, who later bought the nearby Mustang Ranch brothel and won a seat as a county commissioner. In 1999, the county passed an ordinance that preapproves companies to develop most types of commercial and industrial projects across the business park, cutting months to years off the development process. That helped cinch deals with a flock of tenants looking to build big projects fast, including Walmart, Tesla, and Redwood Materials. Now the promise of fast permits is helping to draw data centers by the gigawatt. On a clear, cool January afternoon, Brian Armon, a commercial real estate broker who leads the industrial practices group at NAI Alliance, takes me on a tour of the projects around the region, which mostly entails driving around the business center. Lance Gilman, a local real estate broker, helped to develop the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and land some of its largest tenants.GREGG SEGAL After pulling off Interstate 80 onto USA Parkway, he points out the cranes, earthmovers, and riprap foundations, where a variety of data centers are under construction. Deeper into the industrial park, Armon pulls up near Switch’s long, low, arched-roof facility, which sits on a terrace above cement walls and security gates. The Las Vegas–based company says the first phase of its data center campus encompasses more than a million square feet, and that the full build-out will cover seven times that space. 
    Over the next hill, we turn around in Google’s parking lot. Cranes, tents, framing, and construction equipment extend behind the company’s existing data center, filling much of the 1,210-acre lot that the search engine giant acquired in 2017. Last August, during an event at the University of Nevada, Reno, the company announced it would spend million to expand the data center campus along with another one in Las Vegas. Thompson says that the development company, Tahoe Reno Industrial LLC, has now sold off every parcel of developable land within the park. When I ask Armon what’s attracting all the data centers here, he starts with the fast approvals but cites a list of other lures as well: The inexpensive land. NV Energy’s willingness to strike deals to supply relatively low-cost electricity. Cool nighttime and winter temperatures, as far as American deserts go, which reduce the energy and water needs. The proximity to tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which cuts latency for applications in which milliseconds matter. And the lack of natural disasters that could shut down the facilities, at least for the most part.
    “We are high in seismic activity,” he says. “But everything else is good. We’re not going to have a tornado or flood or a devastating wildfire.” Then there’s the generous tax policies.In 2023, Novva, a Utah-based data center company, announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility within the industrial business park. Nevada doesn’t charge corporate income tax, and it has also enacted deep tax cuts specifically for data centers that set up shop in the state. That includes abatements of up to 75% on property tax for a decade or two—and nearly as much of a bargain on the sales and use taxes applied to equipment purchased for the facilities. Data centers don’t require many permanent workers to run the operations, but the projects have created thousands of construction jobs. They’re also helping to diversify the region’s economy beyond casinos and generating tax windfalls for the state, counties, and cities, says Jeff Sutich, executive director of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. Indeed, just three data-center projects, developed by Apple, Google, and Vantage, will produce nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenue for Nevada, even with those generous abatements, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The question is whether the benefits of data centers are worth the tradeoffs for Nevadans, given the public health costs, greenhouse-gas emissions, energy demands, and water strains. The rain shadow The Sierra Nevada’s granite peaks trace the eastern edge of California, forcing Pacific Ocean winds to rise and cool. That converts water vapor in the air into the rain and snow that fill the range’s tributaries, rivers, and lakes.  But the same meteorological phenomenon casts a rain shadow over much of neighboring Nevada, forming an arid expanse known as the Great Basin Desert. The state receives about 10 inches of precipitation a year, about a third of the national average.
    The Truckee River draws from the melting Sierra snowpack at the edge of Lake Tahoe, cascades down the range, and snakes through the flatlands of Reno and Sparks. It forks at the Derby Dam, a Reclamation Act project a few miles from the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which diverts water to a farming region further east while allowing the rest to continue north toward Pyramid Lake.  Along the way, an engineered system of reservoirs, canals, and treatment plants divert, store, and release water from the river, supplying businesses, cities, towns, and native tribes across the region. But Nevada’s population and economy are expanding, creating more demands on these resources even as they become more constrained. 
    The Truckee River, which originates at Lake Tahoe and terminates at Pyramid Lake, is the major water source for cities, towns, and farms across northwestern Nevada.EMILY NAJERA Throughout much of the 2020s the state has suffered through one of the hottest and most widespread droughts on record, extending two decades of abnormally dry conditions across the American West. Some scientists fear it may constitute an emerging megadrought.  About 50% of Nevada currently faces moderate to exceptional drought conditions. In addition, more than half of the state’s hundreds of groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,” meaning the water rights on paper exceed the levels believed to be underground.  It’s not clear if climate change will increase or decrease the state’s rainfall levels, on balance. But precipitation patterns are expected to become more erratic, whiplashing between short periods of intense rainfall and more-frequent, extended, or severe droughts.  In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, shortening the Sierra snow season by weeks to months over the coming decades.  “In the extreme case, at the end of the century, that’s pretty much all of winter,” says Sean McKenna, executive director of hydrologic sciences at the Desert Research Institute, a research division of the Nevada System of Higher Education. That loss will undermine an essential function of the Sierra snowpack: reliably delivering water to farmers and cities when it’s most needed in the spring and summer, across both Nevada and California.  These shifting conditions will require the region to develop better ways to store, preserve, and recycle the water it does get, McKenna says. Northern Nevada’s cities, towns, and agencies will also need to carefully evaluate and plan for the collective impacts of continuing growth and development on the interconnected water system, particularly when it comes to water-hungry projects like data centers, he adds. “We can’t consider each of these as a one-off, without considering that there may be tens or dozens of these in the next 15 years,” McKenna says.Thirsty data centers Data centers suck up water in two main ways.
    As giant rooms of server racks process information and consume energy, they generate heat that must be shunted away to prevent malfunctions and damage to the equipment. The processing units optimized for training and running AI models often draw more electricity and, in turn, produce more heat. To keep things cool, more and more data centers have turned to liquid cooling systems that don’t need as much electricity as fan cooling or air-conditioning. These often rely on water to absorb heat and transfer it to outdoor cooling towers, where much of the moisture evaporates. Microsoft’s US data centers, for instance, could have directly evaporated nearly 185,000 gallons of “clean freshwater” in the course of training OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model, according to a 2023 preprint study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside.What’s less appreciated, however, is that the larger data-center drain on water generally occurs indirectly, at the power plants generating extra electricity for the turbocharged AI sector. These facilities, in turn, require more water to cool down equipment, among other purposes. You have to add up both uses “to reflect the true water cost of data centers,” says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Ren estimates that the 12 data-center projects listed in NV Energy’s report would directly consume between 860 million gallons and 5.7 billion gallons a year, based on the requested electricity capacity.The indirect water drain associated with electricity generation for those operations could add up to 15.5 billion gallons, based on the average consumption of the regional grid. The exact water figures would depend on shifting climate conditions, the type of cooling systems each data center uses, and the mix of power sources that supply the facilities. Solar power, which provides roughly a quarter of Nevada’s power, requires relatively little water to operate, for instance. But natural-gas plants, which generate about 56%, withdraw 2,803 gallons per megawatt-hour on average, according to the Energy Information Administration.  Geothermal plants, which produce about 10% of the state’s electricity by cycling water through hot rocks, generally consume less water than fossil fuel plants do but often require more water than other renewables, according to some research.  But here too, the water usage varies depending on the type of geothermal plant in question. Google has lined up several deals to partially power its data centers through Fervo Energy, which has helped to commercialize an emerging approach that injects water under high pressure to fracture rock and form wells deep below the surface.  The company stresses that it doesn’t evaporate water for cooling and that it relies on brackish groundwater, not fresh water, to develop and run its plants. In a recent post, Fervo noted that its facilities consume significantly less water per megawatt-hour than coal, nuclear, or natural-gas plants do. Part of NV Energy’s proposed plan to meet growing electricity demands in Nevada includes developing several natural-gas peaking units, adding more than one gigawatt of solar power and installing another gigawatt of battery storage. It's also forging ahead with a more than billion transmission project. But the company didn’t respond to questions concerning how it will supply all of the gigawatts of additional electricity requested by data centers, if the construction of those power plants will increase consumer rates, or how much water those facilities are expected to consume. NV Energy operates a transmission line, substation, and power plant in or around the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA “NV Energy teams work diligently on our long-term planning to make investments in our infrastructure to serve new customers and the continued growth in the state without putting existing customers at risk,” the company said in a statement. An added challenge is that data centers need to run around the clock. That will often compel utilities to develop new electricity-generating sources that can run nonstop as well, as natural-gas, geothermal, or nuclear plants do, says Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the relative water consumption of electricity sources.  “You end up with the water-intensive resources looking more important,” she adds. Even if NV Energy and the companies developing data centers do strive to power them through sources with relatively low water needs, “we only have so much ability to add six gigawatts to Nevada’s grid,” Grubert explains. “What you do will never be system-neutral, because it’s such a big number.” Securing supplies On a mid-February morning, I meet TRI’s Thompson and Don Gilman, Lance Gilman’s son, at the Storey County offices, located within the industrial center.  “I’m just a country boy who sells dirt,” Gilman, also a real estate broker, says by way of introduction.  We climb into his large SUV and drive to a reservoir in the heart of the industrial park, filled nearly to the lip.  Thompson explains that much of the water comes from an on-site treatment facility that filters waste fluids from companies in the park. In addition, tens of millions of gallons of treated effluent will also likely flow into the tank this year from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority Reclamation Facility, near the border of Reno and Sparks. That’s thanks to a 16-mile pipeline that the developers, the water authority, several tenants, and various local cities and agencies partnered to build, through a project that began in 2021. “Our general improvement district is furnishing that water to tech companies here in the park as we speak,” Thompson says. “That helps preserve the precious groundwater, so that is an environmental feather in the cap for these data centers. They are focused on environmental excellence.” The reservoir within the industrial business park provides water to data centers and other tenants.EMILY NAJERA But data centers often need drinking-quality water—not wastewater merely treated to irrigation standards—for evaporative cooling, “to avoid pipe clogs and/or bacterial growth,” the UC Riverside study notes. For instance, Google says its data centers withdrew about 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2023, and nearly 6 billion of those gallons were potable.  Tenants in the industrial park can potentially obtain access to water from the ground and the Truckee River, as well. From early on, the master developers worked hard to secure permits to water sources, since they are nearly as precious as development entitlements to companies hoping to build projects in the desert. Initially, the development company controlled a private business, the TRI Water and Sewer Company, that provided those services to the business park’s tenants, according to public documents. The company set up wells, a water tank, distribution lines, and a sewer disposal system.  But in 2000, the board of county commissioners established a general improvement district, a legal mechanism for providing municipal services in certain parts of the state, to manage electricity and then water within the center. It, in turn, hired TRI Water and Sewer as the operating company. As of its 2020 service plan, the general improvement district held permits for nearly 5,300 acre-feet of groundwater, “which can be pumped from well fields within the service area and used for new growth as it occurs.” The document lists another 2,000 acre-feet per year available from the on-site treatment facility, 1,000 from the Truckee River, and 4,000 more from the effluent pipeline.  Those figures haven’t budged much since, according to Shari Whalen, general manager of the TRI General Improvement District. All told, they add up to more than 4 billion gallons of water per year for all the needs of the industrial park and the tenants there, data centers and otherwise. Whalen says that the amount and quality of water required for any given data center depends on its design, and that those matters are worked out on a case-by-case basis.  When asked if the general improvement district is confident that it has adequate water resources to supply the needs of all the data centers under development, as well as other tenants at the industrial center, she says: “They can’t just show up and build unless they have water resources designated for their projects. We wouldn’t approve a project if it didn’t have those water resources.” Water As the region’s water sources have grown more constrained, lining up supplies has become an increasingly high-stakes and controversial business. More than a century ago, the US federal government filed a lawsuit against an assortment of parties pulling water from the Truckee River. The suit would eventually establish that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s legal rights to water for irrigation superseded other claims. But the tribe has been fighting to protect those rights and increase flows from the river ever since, arguing that increasing strains on the watershed from upstream cities and businesses threaten to draw away water reserved for reservation farming, decrease lake levels, and harm native fish. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe considers the water body and its fish, including the endangered cui-ui and threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, to be essential parts of its culture, identity, and way of life. The tribe was originally named Cui-ui Ticutta, which translates to cui-ui eaters. The lake continues to provide sustenance as well as business for the tribe and its members, a number of whom operate boat charters and fishing guide services. “It’s completely tied into us as a people,” says Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “That is what has sustained us all this time,” he adds. “It’s just who we are. It’s part of our spiritual well-being.” Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, fears that data centers will divert water that would otherwise reach the tribe’s namesake lake.EMILY NAJERA In recent decades, the tribe has sued the Nevada State Engineer, Washoe County, the federal government, and others for overallocating water rights and endangering the lake’s fish. It also protested the TRI General Improvement District’s applications to draw thousands of additional acre‑feet of groundwater from a basin near the business park. In 2019, the State Engineer’s office rejected those requests, concluding that the basin was already fully appropriated.  More recently, the tribe took issue with the plan to build the pipeline and divert effluent that would have flown into the Truckee, securing an agreement that required the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and other parties to add back several thousand acre‑feet of water to the river.  Whalen says she’s sensitive to Wadsworth’s concerns. But she says that the pipeline promises to keep a growing amount of treated wastewater out of the river, where it could otherwise contribute to rising salt levels in the lake. “I think that the pipeline fromto our system is good for water quality in the river,” she says. “I understand philosophically the concerns about data centers, but the general improvement district is dedicated to working with everyone on the river for regional water-resource planning—and the tribe is no exception.” Water efficiency  In an email, Thompson added that he has “great respect and admiration,” for the tribe and has visited the reservation several times in an effort to help bring industrial or commercial development there. He stressed that all of the business park’s groundwater was “validated by the State Water Engineer,” and that the rights to surface water and effluent were purchased “for fair market value.”During the earlier interview at the industrial center, he and Gilman had both expressed confidence that tenants in the park have adequate water supplies, and that the businesses won’t draw water away from other areas.  “We’re in our own aquifer, our own water basin here,” Thompson said. “You put a straw in the ground here, you’re not going to pull water from Fernley or from Reno or from Silver Springs.” Gilman also stressed that data-center companies have gotten more water efficient in recent years, echoing a point others made as well. “With the newer technology, it’s not much of a worry,” says Sutich, of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. “The technology has come a long way in the last 10 years, which is really giving these guys the opportunity to be good stewards of water usage.” An aerial view of the cooling tower fans at Google’s data center in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.GOOGLE Indeed, Google’s existing Storey County facility is air-cooled, according to the company’s latest environmental report. The data center withdrew 1.9 million gallons in 2023 but only consumed 200,000 gallons. The rest cycles back into the water system. Google said all the data centers under construction on its campus will also “utilize air-cooling technology.” The company didn’t respond to a question about the scale of its planned expansion in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and referred a question about indirect water consumption to NV Energy. The search giant has stressed that it strives to be water efficient across all of its data centers, and decides whether to use air or liquid cooling based on local supply and projected demand, among other variables. Four years ago, the company set a goal of replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. Locally, it also committed to provide half a million dollars to the National Forest Foundation to improve the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risks.  Microsoft clearly suggested in earlier news reports that the Silver Springs land it purchased around the end of 2022 would be used for a data center. NAI Alliance’s market real estate report identifies that lot, as well as the parcel Microsoft purchased within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, as data center sites. But the company now declines to specify what it intends to build in the region.  “While the land purchase is public knowledge, we have not disclosed specific detailsour plans for the land or potential development timelines,” wrote Donna Whitehead, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an email.  Workers have begun grading land inside a fenced off lot within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA Microsoft has also scaled down its global data-center ambitions, backing away from several projects in recent months amid shifting economic conditions, according to various reports. Whatever it ultimately does or doesn’t build, the company stresses that it has made strides to reduce water consumption in its facilities. Late last year, the company announced that it’s using “chip-level cooling solutions” in data centers, which continually circulate water between the servers and chillers through a closed loop that the company claims doesn’t lose any water to evaporation. It says the design requires only a “nominal increase” in energy compared to its data centers that rely on evaporative water cooling. Others seem to be taking a similar approach. EdgeCore also said its 900,000-square-foot data center at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center will rely on an “air-cooled closed-loop chiller” that doesn’t require water evaporation for cooling.  But some of the companies seem to have taken steps to ensure access to significant amounts of water. Switch, for instance, took a lead role in developing the effluent pipeline. In addition, Tract, which develops campuses on which third-party data centers can build their own facilities, has said it lined up more than 1,100 acre-feet of water rights, the equivalent of nearly 360 million gallons a year.  Apple, Novva, Switch, Tract, and Vantage didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  Coming conflicts  The suggestion that companies aren’t straining water supplies when they adopt air cooling is, in many cases, akin to saying they’re not responsible for the greenhouse gas produced through their power use simply because it occurs outside of their facilities. In fact, the additional water used at a power plant to meet the increased electricity needs of air cooling may exceed any gains at the data center, Ren, of UC Riverside, says. “That’s actually very likely, because it uses a lot more energy,” he adds. That means that some of the companies developing data centers in and around Storey County may simply hand off their water challenges to other parts of Nevada or neighboring states across the drying American West, depending on where and how the power is generated, Ren says.  Google has said its air-cooled facilities require about 10% more electricity, and its environmental report notes that the Storey County facility is one of its two least-energy-efficient data centers.  Pipes running along Google’s data center campus help the search company cool its servers.GOOGLE Some fear there’s also a growing mismatch between what Nevada’s water permits allow, what’s actually in the ground, and what nature will provide as climate conditions shift. Notably, the groundwater committed to all parties from the Tracy Segment basin—a long-fought-over resource that partially supplies the TRI General Improvement District—already exceeds the “perennial yield.” That refers to the maximum amount that can be drawn out every year without depleting the reservoir over the long term. “If pumping does ultimately exceed the available supply, that means there will be conflict among users,” Roerink, of the Great Basin Water Network, said in an email. “So I have to wonder: Who could be suing whom? Who could be buying out whom? How will the tribe’s rights be defended?”The Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the community-owned utility that manages the water system for Reno and Sparks, said it is planning carefully for the future and remains confident there will be “sufficient resources for decades to come,” at least within its territory east of the industrial center. Storey County, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, and the State Engineer’s office didn’t respond to questions or accept interview requests.  Open for business As data center proposals have begun shifting into Northern Nevada’s cities, more local residents and organizations have begun to take notice and express concerns. The regional division of the Sierra Club, for instance, recently sought to overturn the approval of Reno’s first data center, about 20 miles west of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.  Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, says the environmental organization was shocked by the projected electricity demands from data centers highlighted in NV Energy’s filings. Nevada’s wild horses are a common sight along USA Parkway, the highway cutting through the industrial business park. EMILY NAJERA “We have increasing interest in understanding the impact that data centers will have to our climate goals, to our grid as a whole, and certainly to our water resources,” she says. “The demands are extraordinary, and we don’t have that amount of water to toy around with.” During a city hall hearing in January that stretched late into the evening, she and a line of residents raised concerns about the water, energy, climate, and employment impacts of AI data centers. At the end, though, the city council upheld the planning department’s approval of the project, on a 5-2 vote. “Welcome to Reno,” Kathleen Taylor, Reno’s vice mayor, said before casting her vote. “We’re open for business.” Where the river ends In late March, I walk alongside Chairman Wadsworth, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, watching a row of fly-fishers in waders cast their lines into the cold waters.  The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Lahontan, an Ice Age inland sea that once stretched across western Nevada and would have submerged present-day Reno. But as the climate warmed, the lapping waters retreated, etching erosional terraces into the mountainsides and exposing tufa deposits around the lake, large formations of porous rock made of calcium-carbonate. That includes the pyramid-shaped island on the eastern shore that inspired the lake’s name. A lone angler stands along the shores of Pyramid Lake. In the decades after the US Reclamation Service completed the Derby Dam in 1905, Pyramid Lake declined another 80 feet and nearby Winnemucca Lake dried up entirely. “We know what happens when water use goes unchecked,” says Wadsworth, gesturing eastward toward the range across the lake, where Winnemucca once filled the next basin over. “Because all we have to do is look over there and see a dry, barren lake bed that used to be full.”In an earlier interview, Wadsworth acknowledged that the world needs data centers. But he argued they should be spread out across the country, not densely clustered in the middle of the Nevada desert.Given the fierce competition for resources up to now, he can’t imagine how there could be enough water to meet the demands of data centers, expanding cities, and other growing businesses without straining the limited local supplies that should, by his accounting, flow to Pyramid Lake. He fears these growing pressures will force the tribe to wage new legal battles to protect their rights and preserve the lake, extending what he refers to as “a century of water wars.” “We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature,” Wadsworth says. “Part of our spirit has left us. And that’s why we fight so hard to hold on to what’s left.”
    #data #center #boom #desert
    The data center boom in the desert
    In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.  This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future,” on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny.  Switch, a data center company based in Las Vegas, says the full build-out of its campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center could exceed seven million square feet.EMILY NAJERA The full scale and potential environmental impacts of the developments aren’t known, because the footprint, energy needs, and water requirements are often closely guarded corporate secrets. Most of the companies didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review, or declined to provide additional information about the projects.  But there’s “a whole lot of construction going on,” says Kris Thompson, who served as the longtime project manager for the industrial center before stepping down late last year. “The last number I heard was 13 million square feet under construction right now, which is massive.” Indeed, it’s the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings laid out flat. In addition, public filings from NV Energy, the state’s near-monopoly utility, reveal that a dozen data-center projects, mostly in this area, have requested nearly six gigawatts of electricity capacity within the next decade.  That would make the greater Reno area—the biggest little city in the world—one of the largest data-center markets around the globe. It would also require expanding the state’s power sector by about 40%, all for a single industry in an explosive growth stage that may, or may not, prove sustainable. The energy needs, in turn, suggest those projects could consume billions of gallons of water per year, according to an analysis conducted for this story.  Construction crews are busy building data centers throughout the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA The build-out of a dense cluster of energy and water-hungry data centers in a small stretch of the nation’s driest state, where climate change is driving up temperatures faster than anywhere else in the country, has begun to raise alarms among water experts, environmental groups, and residents. That includes members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose namesake water body lies within their reservation and marks the end point of the Truckee River, the region’s main source of water. Much of Nevada has suffered through severe drought conditions for years, farmers and communities are drawing down many of the state’s groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be refilled, and global warming is sucking more and more moisture out of the region’s streams, shrubs, and soils. “Telling entities that they can come in and stick more straws in the ground for data centers is raising a lot of questions about sound management,” says Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that works to protect water resources throughout Nevada and Utah.  “We just don’t want to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog,” he later added, “where this demand for data centers is driving water policy.” Luring data centers In the late 1850s, the mountains southeast of Reno began enticing prospectors from across the country, who hoped to strike silver or gold in the famed Comstock Lode. But Storey County had few residents or economic prospects by the late 1990s, around the time when Don Roger Norman, a media-shy real estate speculator, spotted a new opportunity in the sagebrush-covered hills.  He began buying up tens of thousands of acres of land for tens of millions of dollars and lining up development approvals to lure industrial projects to what became the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. His partners included Lance Gilman, a cowboy-hat-wearing real estate broker, who later bought the nearby Mustang Ranch brothel and won a seat as a county commissioner. In 1999, the county passed an ordinance that preapproves companies to develop most types of commercial and industrial projects across the business park, cutting months to years off the development process. That helped cinch deals with a flock of tenants looking to build big projects fast, including Walmart, Tesla, and Redwood Materials. Now the promise of fast permits is helping to draw data centers by the gigawatt. On a clear, cool January afternoon, Brian Armon, a commercial real estate broker who leads the industrial practices group at NAI Alliance, takes me on a tour of the projects around the region, which mostly entails driving around the business center. Lance Gilman, a local real estate broker, helped to develop the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and land some of its largest tenants.GREGG SEGAL After pulling off Interstate 80 onto USA Parkway, he points out the cranes, earthmovers, and riprap foundations, where a variety of data centers are under construction. Deeper into the industrial park, Armon pulls up near Switch’s long, low, arched-roof facility, which sits on a terrace above cement walls and security gates. The Las Vegas–based company says the first phase of its data center campus encompasses more than a million square feet, and that the full build-out will cover seven times that space.  Over the next hill, we turn around in Google’s parking lot. Cranes, tents, framing, and construction equipment extend behind the company’s existing data center, filling much of the 1,210-acre lot that the search engine giant acquired in 2017. Last August, during an event at the University of Nevada, Reno, the company announced it would spend million to expand the data center campus along with another one in Las Vegas. Thompson says that the development company, Tahoe Reno Industrial LLC, has now sold off every parcel of developable land within the park. When I ask Armon what’s attracting all the data centers here, he starts with the fast approvals but cites a list of other lures as well: The inexpensive land. NV Energy’s willingness to strike deals to supply relatively low-cost electricity. Cool nighttime and winter temperatures, as far as American deserts go, which reduce the energy and water needs. The proximity to tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which cuts latency for applications in which milliseconds matter. And the lack of natural disasters that could shut down the facilities, at least for the most part. “We are high in seismic activity,” he says. “But everything else is good. We’re not going to have a tornado or flood or a devastating wildfire.” Then there’s the generous tax policies.In 2023, Novva, a Utah-based data center company, announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility within the industrial business park. Nevada doesn’t charge corporate income tax, and it has also enacted deep tax cuts specifically for data centers that set up shop in the state. That includes abatements of up to 75% on property tax for a decade or two—and nearly as much of a bargain on the sales and use taxes applied to equipment purchased for the facilities. Data centers don’t require many permanent workers to run the operations, but the projects have created thousands of construction jobs. They’re also helping to diversify the region’s economy beyond casinos and generating tax windfalls for the state, counties, and cities, says Jeff Sutich, executive director of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. Indeed, just three data-center projects, developed by Apple, Google, and Vantage, will produce nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenue for Nevada, even with those generous abatements, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The question is whether the benefits of data centers are worth the tradeoffs for Nevadans, given the public health costs, greenhouse-gas emissions, energy demands, and water strains. The rain shadow The Sierra Nevada’s granite peaks trace the eastern edge of California, forcing Pacific Ocean winds to rise and cool. That converts water vapor in the air into the rain and snow that fill the range’s tributaries, rivers, and lakes.  But the same meteorological phenomenon casts a rain shadow over much of neighboring Nevada, forming an arid expanse known as the Great Basin Desert. The state receives about 10 inches of precipitation a year, about a third of the national average. The Truckee River draws from the melting Sierra snowpack at the edge of Lake Tahoe, cascades down the range, and snakes through the flatlands of Reno and Sparks. It forks at the Derby Dam, a Reclamation Act project a few miles from the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which diverts water to a farming region further east while allowing the rest to continue north toward Pyramid Lake.  Along the way, an engineered system of reservoirs, canals, and treatment plants divert, store, and release water from the river, supplying businesses, cities, towns, and native tribes across the region. But Nevada’s population and economy are expanding, creating more demands on these resources even as they become more constrained.  The Truckee River, which originates at Lake Tahoe and terminates at Pyramid Lake, is the major water source for cities, towns, and farms across northwestern Nevada.EMILY NAJERA Throughout much of the 2020s the state has suffered through one of the hottest and most widespread droughts on record, extending two decades of abnormally dry conditions across the American West. Some scientists fear it may constitute an emerging megadrought.  About 50% of Nevada currently faces moderate to exceptional drought conditions. In addition, more than half of the state’s hundreds of groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,” meaning the water rights on paper exceed the levels believed to be underground.  It’s not clear if climate change will increase or decrease the state’s rainfall levels, on balance. But precipitation patterns are expected to become more erratic, whiplashing between short periods of intense rainfall and more-frequent, extended, or severe droughts.  In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, shortening the Sierra snow season by weeks to months over the coming decades.  “In the extreme case, at the end of the century, that’s pretty much all of winter,” says Sean McKenna, executive director of hydrologic sciences at the Desert Research Institute, a research division of the Nevada System of Higher Education. That loss will undermine an essential function of the Sierra snowpack: reliably delivering water to farmers and cities when it’s most needed in the spring and summer, across both Nevada and California.  These shifting conditions will require the region to develop better ways to store, preserve, and recycle the water it does get, McKenna says. Northern Nevada’s cities, towns, and agencies will also need to carefully evaluate and plan for the collective impacts of continuing growth and development on the interconnected water system, particularly when it comes to water-hungry projects like data centers, he adds. “We can’t consider each of these as a one-off, without considering that there may be tens or dozens of these in the next 15 years,” McKenna says.Thirsty data centers Data centers suck up water in two main ways. As giant rooms of server racks process information and consume energy, they generate heat that must be shunted away to prevent malfunctions and damage to the equipment. The processing units optimized for training and running AI models often draw more electricity and, in turn, produce more heat. To keep things cool, more and more data centers have turned to liquid cooling systems that don’t need as much electricity as fan cooling or air-conditioning. These often rely on water to absorb heat and transfer it to outdoor cooling towers, where much of the moisture evaporates. Microsoft’s US data centers, for instance, could have directly evaporated nearly 185,000 gallons of “clean freshwater” in the course of training OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model, according to a 2023 preprint study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside.What’s less appreciated, however, is that the larger data-center drain on water generally occurs indirectly, at the power plants generating extra electricity for the turbocharged AI sector. These facilities, in turn, require more water to cool down equipment, among other purposes. You have to add up both uses “to reflect the true water cost of data centers,” says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Ren estimates that the 12 data-center projects listed in NV Energy’s report would directly consume between 860 million gallons and 5.7 billion gallons a year, based on the requested electricity capacity.The indirect water drain associated with electricity generation for those operations could add up to 15.5 billion gallons, based on the average consumption of the regional grid. The exact water figures would depend on shifting climate conditions, the type of cooling systems each data center uses, and the mix of power sources that supply the facilities. Solar power, which provides roughly a quarter of Nevada’s power, requires relatively little water to operate, for instance. But natural-gas plants, which generate about 56%, withdraw 2,803 gallons per megawatt-hour on average, according to the Energy Information Administration.  Geothermal plants, which produce about 10% of the state’s electricity by cycling water through hot rocks, generally consume less water than fossil fuel plants do but often require more water than other renewables, according to some research.  But here too, the water usage varies depending on the type of geothermal plant in question. Google has lined up several deals to partially power its data centers through Fervo Energy, which has helped to commercialize an emerging approach that injects water under high pressure to fracture rock and form wells deep below the surface.  The company stresses that it doesn’t evaporate water for cooling and that it relies on brackish groundwater, not fresh water, to develop and run its plants. In a recent post, Fervo noted that its facilities consume significantly less water per megawatt-hour than coal, nuclear, or natural-gas plants do. Part of NV Energy’s proposed plan to meet growing electricity demands in Nevada includes developing several natural-gas peaking units, adding more than one gigawatt of solar power and installing another gigawatt of battery storage. It's also forging ahead with a more than billion transmission project. But the company didn’t respond to questions concerning how it will supply all of the gigawatts of additional electricity requested by data centers, if the construction of those power plants will increase consumer rates, or how much water those facilities are expected to consume. NV Energy operates a transmission line, substation, and power plant in or around the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA “NV Energy teams work diligently on our long-term planning to make investments in our infrastructure to serve new customers and the continued growth in the state without putting existing customers at risk,” the company said in a statement. An added challenge is that data centers need to run around the clock. That will often compel utilities to develop new electricity-generating sources that can run nonstop as well, as natural-gas, geothermal, or nuclear plants do, says Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the relative water consumption of electricity sources.  “You end up with the water-intensive resources looking more important,” she adds. Even if NV Energy and the companies developing data centers do strive to power them through sources with relatively low water needs, “we only have so much ability to add six gigawatts to Nevada’s grid,” Grubert explains. “What you do will never be system-neutral, because it’s such a big number.” Securing supplies On a mid-February morning, I meet TRI’s Thompson and Don Gilman, Lance Gilman’s son, at the Storey County offices, located within the industrial center.  “I’m just a country boy who sells dirt,” Gilman, also a real estate broker, says by way of introduction.  We climb into his large SUV and drive to a reservoir in the heart of the industrial park, filled nearly to the lip.  Thompson explains that much of the water comes from an on-site treatment facility that filters waste fluids from companies in the park. In addition, tens of millions of gallons of treated effluent will also likely flow into the tank this year from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority Reclamation Facility, near the border of Reno and Sparks. That’s thanks to a 16-mile pipeline that the developers, the water authority, several tenants, and various local cities and agencies partnered to build, through a project that began in 2021. “Our general improvement district is furnishing that water to tech companies here in the park as we speak,” Thompson says. “That helps preserve the precious groundwater, so that is an environmental feather in the cap for these data centers. They are focused on environmental excellence.” The reservoir within the industrial business park provides water to data centers and other tenants.EMILY NAJERA But data centers often need drinking-quality water—not wastewater merely treated to irrigation standards—for evaporative cooling, “to avoid pipe clogs and/or bacterial growth,” the UC Riverside study notes. For instance, Google says its data centers withdrew about 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2023, and nearly 6 billion of those gallons were potable.  Tenants in the industrial park can potentially obtain access to water from the ground and the Truckee River, as well. From early on, the master developers worked hard to secure permits to water sources, since they are nearly as precious as development entitlements to companies hoping to build projects in the desert. Initially, the development company controlled a private business, the TRI Water and Sewer Company, that provided those services to the business park’s tenants, according to public documents. The company set up wells, a water tank, distribution lines, and a sewer disposal system.  But in 2000, the board of county commissioners established a general improvement district, a legal mechanism for providing municipal services in certain parts of the state, to manage electricity and then water within the center. It, in turn, hired TRI Water and Sewer as the operating company. As of its 2020 service plan, the general improvement district held permits for nearly 5,300 acre-feet of groundwater, “which can be pumped from well fields within the service area and used for new growth as it occurs.” The document lists another 2,000 acre-feet per year available from the on-site treatment facility, 1,000 from the Truckee River, and 4,000 more from the effluent pipeline.  Those figures haven’t budged much since, according to Shari Whalen, general manager of the TRI General Improvement District. All told, they add up to more than 4 billion gallons of water per year for all the needs of the industrial park and the tenants there, data centers and otherwise. Whalen says that the amount and quality of water required for any given data center depends on its design, and that those matters are worked out on a case-by-case basis.  When asked if the general improvement district is confident that it has adequate water resources to supply the needs of all the data centers under development, as well as other tenants at the industrial center, she says: “They can’t just show up and build unless they have water resources designated for their projects. We wouldn’t approve a project if it didn’t have those water resources.” Water As the region’s water sources have grown more constrained, lining up supplies has become an increasingly high-stakes and controversial business. More than a century ago, the US federal government filed a lawsuit against an assortment of parties pulling water from the Truckee River. The suit would eventually establish that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s legal rights to water for irrigation superseded other claims. But the tribe has been fighting to protect those rights and increase flows from the river ever since, arguing that increasing strains on the watershed from upstream cities and businesses threaten to draw away water reserved for reservation farming, decrease lake levels, and harm native fish. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe considers the water body and its fish, including the endangered cui-ui and threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, to be essential parts of its culture, identity, and way of life. The tribe was originally named Cui-ui Ticutta, which translates to cui-ui eaters. The lake continues to provide sustenance as well as business for the tribe and its members, a number of whom operate boat charters and fishing guide services. “It’s completely tied into us as a people,” says Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “That is what has sustained us all this time,” he adds. “It’s just who we are. It’s part of our spiritual well-being.” Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, fears that data centers will divert water that would otherwise reach the tribe’s namesake lake.EMILY NAJERA In recent decades, the tribe has sued the Nevada State Engineer, Washoe County, the federal government, and others for overallocating water rights and endangering the lake’s fish. It also protested the TRI General Improvement District’s applications to draw thousands of additional acre‑feet of groundwater from a basin near the business park. In 2019, the State Engineer’s office rejected those requests, concluding that the basin was already fully appropriated.  More recently, the tribe took issue with the plan to build the pipeline and divert effluent that would have flown into the Truckee, securing an agreement that required the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and other parties to add back several thousand acre‑feet of water to the river.  Whalen says she’s sensitive to Wadsworth’s concerns. But she says that the pipeline promises to keep a growing amount of treated wastewater out of the river, where it could otherwise contribute to rising salt levels in the lake. “I think that the pipeline fromto our system is good for water quality in the river,” she says. “I understand philosophically the concerns about data centers, but the general improvement district is dedicated to working with everyone on the river for regional water-resource planning—and the tribe is no exception.” Water efficiency  In an email, Thompson added that he has “great respect and admiration,” for the tribe and has visited the reservation several times in an effort to help bring industrial or commercial development there. He stressed that all of the business park’s groundwater was “validated by the State Water Engineer,” and that the rights to surface water and effluent were purchased “for fair market value.”During the earlier interview at the industrial center, he and Gilman had both expressed confidence that tenants in the park have adequate water supplies, and that the businesses won’t draw water away from other areas.  “We’re in our own aquifer, our own water basin here,” Thompson said. “You put a straw in the ground here, you’re not going to pull water from Fernley or from Reno or from Silver Springs.” Gilman also stressed that data-center companies have gotten more water efficient in recent years, echoing a point others made as well. “With the newer technology, it’s not much of a worry,” says Sutich, of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. “The technology has come a long way in the last 10 years, which is really giving these guys the opportunity to be good stewards of water usage.” An aerial view of the cooling tower fans at Google’s data center in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.GOOGLE Indeed, Google’s existing Storey County facility is air-cooled, according to the company’s latest environmental report. The data center withdrew 1.9 million gallons in 2023 but only consumed 200,000 gallons. The rest cycles back into the water system. Google said all the data centers under construction on its campus will also “utilize air-cooling technology.” The company didn’t respond to a question about the scale of its planned expansion in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and referred a question about indirect water consumption to NV Energy. The search giant has stressed that it strives to be water efficient across all of its data centers, and decides whether to use air or liquid cooling based on local supply and projected demand, among other variables. Four years ago, the company set a goal of replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. Locally, it also committed to provide half a million dollars to the National Forest Foundation to improve the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risks.  Microsoft clearly suggested in earlier news reports that the Silver Springs land it purchased around the end of 2022 would be used for a data center. NAI Alliance’s market real estate report identifies that lot, as well as the parcel Microsoft purchased within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, as data center sites. But the company now declines to specify what it intends to build in the region.  “While the land purchase is public knowledge, we have not disclosed specific detailsour plans for the land or potential development timelines,” wrote Donna Whitehead, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an email.  Workers have begun grading land inside a fenced off lot within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA Microsoft has also scaled down its global data-center ambitions, backing away from several projects in recent months amid shifting economic conditions, according to various reports. Whatever it ultimately does or doesn’t build, the company stresses that it has made strides to reduce water consumption in its facilities. Late last year, the company announced that it’s using “chip-level cooling solutions” in data centers, which continually circulate water between the servers and chillers through a closed loop that the company claims doesn’t lose any water to evaporation. It says the design requires only a “nominal increase” in energy compared to its data centers that rely on evaporative water cooling. Others seem to be taking a similar approach. EdgeCore also said its 900,000-square-foot data center at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center will rely on an “air-cooled closed-loop chiller” that doesn’t require water evaporation for cooling.  But some of the companies seem to have taken steps to ensure access to significant amounts of water. Switch, for instance, took a lead role in developing the effluent pipeline. In addition, Tract, which develops campuses on which third-party data centers can build their own facilities, has said it lined up more than 1,100 acre-feet of water rights, the equivalent of nearly 360 million gallons a year.  Apple, Novva, Switch, Tract, and Vantage didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  Coming conflicts  The suggestion that companies aren’t straining water supplies when they adopt air cooling is, in many cases, akin to saying they’re not responsible for the greenhouse gas produced through their power use simply because it occurs outside of their facilities. In fact, the additional water used at a power plant to meet the increased electricity needs of air cooling may exceed any gains at the data center, Ren, of UC Riverside, says. “That’s actually very likely, because it uses a lot more energy,” he adds. That means that some of the companies developing data centers in and around Storey County may simply hand off their water challenges to other parts of Nevada or neighboring states across the drying American West, depending on where and how the power is generated, Ren says.  Google has said its air-cooled facilities require about 10% more electricity, and its environmental report notes that the Storey County facility is one of its two least-energy-efficient data centers.  Pipes running along Google’s data center campus help the search company cool its servers.GOOGLE Some fear there’s also a growing mismatch between what Nevada’s water permits allow, what’s actually in the ground, and what nature will provide as climate conditions shift. Notably, the groundwater committed to all parties from the Tracy Segment basin—a long-fought-over resource that partially supplies the TRI General Improvement District—already exceeds the “perennial yield.” That refers to the maximum amount that can be drawn out every year without depleting the reservoir over the long term. “If pumping does ultimately exceed the available supply, that means there will be conflict among users,” Roerink, of the Great Basin Water Network, said in an email. “So I have to wonder: Who could be suing whom? Who could be buying out whom? How will the tribe’s rights be defended?”The Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the community-owned utility that manages the water system for Reno and Sparks, said it is planning carefully for the future and remains confident there will be “sufficient resources for decades to come,” at least within its territory east of the industrial center. Storey County, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, and the State Engineer’s office didn’t respond to questions or accept interview requests.  Open for business As data center proposals have begun shifting into Northern Nevada’s cities, more local residents and organizations have begun to take notice and express concerns. The regional division of the Sierra Club, for instance, recently sought to overturn the approval of Reno’s first data center, about 20 miles west of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.  Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, says the environmental organization was shocked by the projected electricity demands from data centers highlighted in NV Energy’s filings. Nevada’s wild horses are a common sight along USA Parkway, the highway cutting through the industrial business park. EMILY NAJERA “We have increasing interest in understanding the impact that data centers will have to our climate goals, to our grid as a whole, and certainly to our water resources,” she says. “The demands are extraordinary, and we don’t have that amount of water to toy around with.” During a city hall hearing in January that stretched late into the evening, she and a line of residents raised concerns about the water, energy, climate, and employment impacts of AI data centers. At the end, though, the city council upheld the planning department’s approval of the project, on a 5-2 vote. “Welcome to Reno,” Kathleen Taylor, Reno’s vice mayor, said before casting her vote. “We’re open for business.” Where the river ends In late March, I walk alongside Chairman Wadsworth, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, watching a row of fly-fishers in waders cast their lines into the cold waters.  The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Lahontan, an Ice Age inland sea that once stretched across western Nevada and would have submerged present-day Reno. But as the climate warmed, the lapping waters retreated, etching erosional terraces into the mountainsides and exposing tufa deposits around the lake, large formations of porous rock made of calcium-carbonate. That includes the pyramid-shaped island on the eastern shore that inspired the lake’s name. A lone angler stands along the shores of Pyramid Lake. In the decades after the US Reclamation Service completed the Derby Dam in 1905, Pyramid Lake declined another 80 feet and nearby Winnemucca Lake dried up entirely. “We know what happens when water use goes unchecked,” says Wadsworth, gesturing eastward toward the range across the lake, where Winnemucca once filled the next basin over. “Because all we have to do is look over there and see a dry, barren lake bed that used to be full.”In an earlier interview, Wadsworth acknowledged that the world needs data centers. But he argued they should be spread out across the country, not densely clustered in the middle of the Nevada desert.Given the fierce competition for resources up to now, he can’t imagine how there could be enough water to meet the demands of data centers, expanding cities, and other growing businesses without straining the limited local supplies that should, by his accounting, flow to Pyramid Lake. He fears these growing pressures will force the tribe to wage new legal battles to protect their rights and preserve the lake, extending what he refers to as “a century of water wars.” “We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature,” Wadsworth says. “Part of our spirit has left us. And that’s why we fight so hard to hold on to what’s left.” #data #center #boom #desert
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    The data center boom in the desert
    In the high desert east of Reno, Nevada, construction crews are flattening the golden foothills of the Virginia Range, laying the foundations of a data center city. Google, Tract, Switch, EdgeCore, Novva, Vantage, and PowerHouse are all operating, building, or expanding huge facilities within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, a business park bigger than the city of Detroit.  This story is a part of MIT Technology Review’s series “Power Hungry: AI and our energy future,” on the energy demands and carbon costs of the artificial-intelligence revolution. Meanwhile, Microsoft acquired more than 225 acres of undeveloped property within the center and an even larger plot in nearby Silver Springs, Nevada. Apple is expanding its data center, located just across the Truckee River from the industrial park. OpenAI has said it’s considering building a data center in Nevada as well. The corporate race to amass computing resources to train and run artificial intelligence models and store information in the cloud has sparked a data center boom in the desert—just far enough away from Nevada’s communities to elude wide notice and, some fear, adequate scrutiny.  Switch, a data center company based in Las Vegas, says the full build-out of its campus at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center could exceed seven million square feet.EMILY NAJERA The full scale and potential environmental impacts of the developments aren’t known, because the footprint, energy needs, and water requirements are often closely guarded corporate secrets. Most of the companies didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review, or declined to provide additional information about the projects.  But there’s “a whole lot of construction going on,” says Kris Thompson, who served as the longtime project manager for the industrial center before stepping down late last year. “The last number I heard was 13 million square feet under construction right now, which is massive.” Indeed, it’s the equivalent of almost five Empire State Buildings laid out flat. In addition, public filings from NV Energy, the state’s near-monopoly utility, reveal that a dozen data-center projects, mostly in this area, have requested nearly six gigawatts of electricity capacity within the next decade.  That would make the greater Reno area—the biggest little city in the world—one of the largest data-center markets around the globe. It would also require expanding the state’s power sector by about 40%, all for a single industry in an explosive growth stage that may, or may not, prove sustainable. The energy needs, in turn, suggest those projects could consume billions of gallons of water per year, according to an analysis conducted for this story.  Construction crews are busy building data centers throughout the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA The build-out of a dense cluster of energy and water-hungry data centers in a small stretch of the nation’s driest state, where climate change is driving up temperatures faster than anywhere else in the country, has begun to raise alarms among water experts, environmental groups, and residents. That includes members of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, whose namesake water body lies within their reservation and marks the end point of the Truckee River, the region’s main source of water. Much of Nevada has suffered through severe drought conditions for years, farmers and communities are drawing down many of the state’s groundwater reservoirs faster than they can be refilled, and global warming is sucking more and more moisture out of the region’s streams, shrubs, and soils. “Telling entities that they can come in and stick more straws in the ground for data centers is raising a lot of questions about sound management,” says Kyle Roerink, executive director of the Great Basin Water Network, a nonprofit that works to protect water resources throughout Nevada and Utah.  “We just don’t want to be in a situation where the tail is wagging the dog,” he later added, “where this demand for data centers is driving water policy.” Luring data centers In the late 1850s, the mountains southeast of Reno began enticing prospectors from across the country, who hoped to strike silver or gold in the famed Comstock Lode. But Storey County had few residents or economic prospects by the late 1990s, around the time when Don Roger Norman, a media-shy real estate speculator, spotted a new opportunity in the sagebrush-covered hills.  He began buying up tens of thousands of acres of land for tens of millions of dollars and lining up development approvals to lure industrial projects to what became the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center. His partners included Lance Gilman, a cowboy-hat-wearing real estate broker, who later bought the nearby Mustang Ranch brothel and won a seat as a county commissioner. In 1999, the county passed an ordinance that preapproves companies to develop most types of commercial and industrial projects across the business park, cutting months to years off the development process. That helped cinch deals with a flock of tenants looking to build big projects fast, including Walmart, Tesla, and Redwood Materials. Now the promise of fast permits is helping to draw data centers by the gigawatt. On a clear, cool January afternoon, Brian Armon, a commercial real estate broker who leads the industrial practices group at NAI Alliance, takes me on a tour of the projects around the region, which mostly entails driving around the business center. Lance Gilman, a local real estate broker, helped to develop the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center and land some of its largest tenants.GREGG SEGAL After pulling off Interstate 80 onto USA Parkway, he points out the cranes, earthmovers, and riprap foundations, where a variety of data centers are under construction. Deeper into the industrial park, Armon pulls up near Switch’s long, low, arched-roof facility, which sits on a terrace above cement walls and security gates. The Las Vegas–based company says the first phase of its data center campus encompasses more than a million square feet, and that the full build-out will cover seven times that space.  Over the next hill, we turn around in Google’s parking lot. Cranes, tents, framing, and construction equipment extend behind the company’s existing data center, filling much of the 1,210-acre lot that the search engine giant acquired in 2017. Last August, during an event at the University of Nevada, Reno, the company announced it would spend $400 million to expand the data center campus along with another one in Las Vegas. Thompson says that the development company, Tahoe Reno Industrial LLC, has now sold off every parcel of developable land within the park (although several lots are available for resale following the failed gamble of one crypto tenant). When I ask Armon what’s attracting all the data centers here, he starts with the fast approvals but cites a list of other lures as well: The inexpensive land. NV Energy’s willingness to strike deals to supply relatively low-cost electricity. Cool nighttime and winter temperatures, as far as American deserts go, which reduce the energy and water needs. The proximity to tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which cuts latency for applications in which milliseconds matter. And the lack of natural disasters that could shut down the facilities, at least for the most part. “We are high in seismic activity,” he says. “But everything else is good. We’re not going to have a tornado or flood or a devastating wildfire.” Then there’s the generous tax policies.In 2023, Novva, a Utah-based data center company, announced plans to build a 300,000-square-foot facility within the industrial business park. Nevada doesn’t charge corporate income tax, and it has also enacted deep tax cuts specifically for data centers that set up shop in the state. That includes abatements of up to 75% on property tax for a decade or two—and nearly as much of a bargain on the sales and use taxes applied to equipment purchased for the facilities. Data centers don’t require many permanent workers to run the operations, but the projects have created thousands of construction jobs. They’re also helping to diversify the region’s economy beyond casinos and generating tax windfalls for the state, counties, and cities, says Jeff Sutich, executive director of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. Indeed, just three data-center projects, developed by Apple, Google, and Vantage, will produce nearly half a billion dollars in tax revenue for Nevada, even with those generous abatements, according to the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The question is whether the benefits of data centers are worth the tradeoffs for Nevadans, given the public health costs, greenhouse-gas emissions, energy demands, and water strains. The rain shadow The Sierra Nevada’s granite peaks trace the eastern edge of California, forcing Pacific Ocean winds to rise and cool. That converts water vapor in the air into the rain and snow that fill the range’s tributaries, rivers, and lakes.  But the same meteorological phenomenon casts a rain shadow over much of neighboring Nevada, forming an arid expanse known as the Great Basin Desert. The state receives about 10 inches of precipitation a year, about a third of the national average. The Truckee River draws from the melting Sierra snowpack at the edge of Lake Tahoe, cascades down the range, and snakes through the flatlands of Reno and Sparks. It forks at the Derby Dam, a Reclamation Act project a few miles from the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, which diverts water to a farming region further east while allowing the rest to continue north toward Pyramid Lake.  Along the way, an engineered system of reservoirs, canals, and treatment plants divert, store, and release water from the river, supplying businesses, cities, towns, and native tribes across the region. But Nevada’s population and economy are expanding, creating more demands on these resources even as they become more constrained.  The Truckee River, which originates at Lake Tahoe and terminates at Pyramid Lake, is the major water source for cities, towns, and farms across northwestern Nevada.EMILY NAJERA Throughout much of the 2020s the state has suffered through one of the hottest and most widespread droughts on record, extending two decades of abnormally dry conditions across the American West. Some scientists fear it may constitute an emerging megadrought.  About 50% of Nevada currently faces moderate to exceptional drought conditions. In addition, more than half of the state’s hundreds of groundwater basins are already “over-appropriated,” meaning the water rights on paper exceed the levels believed to be underground.  It’s not clear if climate change will increase or decrease the state’s rainfall levels, on balance. But precipitation patterns are expected to become more erratic, whiplashing between short periods of intense rainfall and more-frequent, extended, or severe droughts.  In addition, more precipitation will fall as rain rather than snow, shortening the Sierra snow season by weeks to months over the coming decades.  “In the extreme case, at the end of the century, that’s pretty much all of winter,” says Sean McKenna, executive director of hydrologic sciences at the Desert Research Institute, a research division of the Nevada System of Higher Education. That loss will undermine an essential function of the Sierra snowpack: reliably delivering water to farmers and cities when it’s most needed in the spring and summer, across both Nevada and California.  These shifting conditions will require the region to develop better ways to store, preserve, and recycle the water it does get, McKenna says. Northern Nevada’s cities, towns, and agencies will also need to carefully evaluate and plan for the collective impacts of continuing growth and development on the interconnected water system, particularly when it comes to water-hungry projects like data centers, he adds. “We can’t consider each of these as a one-off, without considering that there may be tens or dozens of these in the next 15 years,” McKenna says.Thirsty data centers Data centers suck up water in two main ways. As giant rooms of server racks process information and consume energy, they generate heat that must be shunted away to prevent malfunctions and damage to the equipment. The processing units optimized for training and running AI models often draw more electricity and, in turn, produce more heat. To keep things cool, more and more data centers have turned to liquid cooling systems that don’t need as much electricity as fan cooling or air-conditioning. These often rely on water to absorb heat and transfer it to outdoor cooling towers, where much of the moisture evaporates. Microsoft’s US data centers, for instance, could have directly evaporated nearly 185,000 gallons of “clean freshwater” in the course of training OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model, according to a 2023 preprint study led by researchers at the University of California, Riverside. (The research has since been peer-reviewed and is awaiting publication.) What’s less appreciated, however, is that the larger data-center drain on water generally occurs indirectly, at the power plants generating extra electricity for the turbocharged AI sector. These facilities, in turn, require more water to cool down equipment, among other purposes. You have to add up both uses “to reflect the true water cost of data centers,” says Shaolei Ren, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Riverside and coauthor of the study. Ren estimates that the 12 data-center projects listed in NV Energy’s report would directly consume between 860 million gallons and 5.7 billion gallons a year, based on the requested electricity capacity. (“Consumed” here means the water is evaporated, not merely withdrawn and returned to the engineered water system.) The indirect water drain associated with electricity generation for those operations could add up to 15.5 billion gallons, based on the average consumption of the regional grid. The exact water figures would depend on shifting climate conditions, the type of cooling systems each data center uses, and the mix of power sources that supply the facilities. Solar power, which provides roughly a quarter of Nevada’s power, requires relatively little water to operate, for instance. But natural-gas plants, which generate about 56%, withdraw 2,803 gallons per megawatt-hour on average, according to the Energy Information Administration.  Geothermal plants, which produce about 10% of the state’s electricity by cycling water through hot rocks, generally consume less water than fossil fuel plants do but often require more water than other renewables, according to some research.  But here too, the water usage varies depending on the type of geothermal plant in question. Google has lined up several deals to partially power its data centers through Fervo Energy, which has helped to commercialize an emerging approach that injects water under high pressure to fracture rock and form wells deep below the surface.  The company stresses that it doesn’t evaporate water for cooling and that it relies on brackish groundwater, not fresh water, to develop and run its plants. In a recent post, Fervo noted that its facilities consume significantly less water per megawatt-hour than coal, nuclear, or natural-gas plants do. Part of NV Energy’s proposed plan to meet growing electricity demands in Nevada includes developing several natural-gas peaking units, adding more than one gigawatt of solar power and installing another gigawatt of battery storage. It's also forging ahead with a more than $4 billion transmission project. But the company didn’t respond to questions concerning how it will supply all of the gigawatts of additional electricity requested by data centers, if the construction of those power plants will increase consumer rates, or how much water those facilities are expected to consume. NV Energy operates a transmission line, substation, and power plant in or around the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA “NV Energy teams work diligently on our long-term planning to make investments in our infrastructure to serve new customers and the continued growth in the state without putting existing customers at risk,” the company said in a statement. An added challenge is that data centers need to run around the clock. That will often compel utilities to develop new electricity-generating sources that can run nonstop as well, as natural-gas, geothermal, or nuclear plants do, says Emily Grubert, an associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame, who has studied the relative water consumption of electricity sources.  “You end up with the water-intensive resources looking more important,” she adds. Even if NV Energy and the companies developing data centers do strive to power them through sources with relatively low water needs, “we only have so much ability to add six gigawatts to Nevada’s grid,” Grubert explains. “What you do will never be system-neutral, because it’s such a big number.” Securing supplies On a mid-February morning, I meet TRI’s Thompson and Don Gilman, Lance Gilman’s son, at the Storey County offices, located within the industrial center.  “I’m just a country boy who sells dirt,” Gilman, also a real estate broker, says by way of introduction.  We climb into his large SUV and drive to a reservoir in the heart of the industrial park, filled nearly to the lip.  Thompson explains that much of the water comes from an on-site treatment facility that filters waste fluids from companies in the park. In addition, tens of millions of gallons of treated effluent will also likely flow into the tank this year from the Truckee Meadows Water Authority Reclamation Facility, near the border of Reno and Sparks. That’s thanks to a 16-mile pipeline that the developers, the water authority, several tenants, and various local cities and agencies partnered to build, through a project that began in 2021. “Our general improvement district is furnishing that water to tech companies here in the park as we speak,” Thompson says. “That helps preserve the precious groundwater, so that is an environmental feather in the cap for these data centers. They are focused on environmental excellence.” The reservoir within the industrial business park provides water to data centers and other tenants.EMILY NAJERA But data centers often need drinking-quality water—not wastewater merely treated to irrigation standards—for evaporative cooling, “to avoid pipe clogs and/or bacterial growth,” the UC Riverside study notes. For instance, Google says its data centers withdrew about 7.7 billion gallons of water in 2023, and nearly 6 billion of those gallons were potable.  Tenants in the industrial park can potentially obtain access to water from the ground and the Truckee River, as well. From early on, the master developers worked hard to secure permits to water sources, since they are nearly as precious as development entitlements to companies hoping to build projects in the desert. Initially, the development company controlled a private business, the TRI Water and Sewer Company, that provided those services to the business park’s tenants, according to public documents. The company set up wells, a water tank, distribution lines, and a sewer disposal system.  But in 2000, the board of county commissioners established a general improvement district, a legal mechanism for providing municipal services in certain parts of the state, to manage electricity and then water within the center. It, in turn, hired TRI Water and Sewer as the operating company. As of its 2020 service plan, the general improvement district held permits for nearly 5,300 acre-feet of groundwater, “which can be pumped from well fields within the service area and used for new growth as it occurs.” The document lists another 2,000 acre-feet per year available from the on-site treatment facility, 1,000 from the Truckee River, and 4,000 more from the effluent pipeline.  Those figures haven’t budged much since, according to Shari Whalen, general manager of the TRI General Improvement District. All told, they add up to more than 4 billion gallons of water per year for all the needs of the industrial park and the tenants there, data centers and otherwise. Whalen says that the amount and quality of water required for any given data center depends on its design, and that those matters are worked out on a case-by-case basis.  When asked if the general improvement district is confident that it has adequate water resources to supply the needs of all the data centers under development, as well as other tenants at the industrial center, she says: “They can’t just show up and build unless they have water resources designated for their projects. We wouldn’t approve a project if it didn’t have those water resources.” Water As the region’s water sources have grown more constrained, lining up supplies has become an increasingly high-stakes and controversial business. More than a century ago, the US federal government filed a lawsuit against an assortment of parties pulling water from the Truckee River. The suit would eventually establish that the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe’s legal rights to water for irrigation superseded other claims. But the tribe has been fighting to protect those rights and increase flows from the river ever since, arguing that increasing strains on the watershed from upstream cities and businesses threaten to draw away water reserved for reservation farming, decrease lake levels, and harm native fish. The Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe considers the water body and its fish, including the endangered cui-ui and threatened Lahontan cutthroat trout, to be essential parts of its culture, identity, and way of life. The tribe was originally named Cui-ui Ticutta, which translates to cui-ui eaters. The lake continues to provide sustenance as well as business for the tribe and its members, a number of whom operate boat charters and fishing guide services. “It’s completely tied into us as a people,” says Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. “That is what has sustained us all this time,” he adds. “It’s just who we are. It’s part of our spiritual well-being.” Steven Wadsworth, chairman of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, fears that data centers will divert water that would otherwise reach the tribe’s namesake lake.EMILY NAJERA In recent decades, the tribe has sued the Nevada State Engineer, Washoe County, the federal government, and others for overallocating water rights and endangering the lake’s fish. It also protested the TRI General Improvement District’s applications to draw thousands of additional acre‑feet of groundwater from a basin near the business park. In 2019, the State Engineer’s office rejected those requests, concluding that the basin was already fully appropriated.  More recently, the tribe took issue with the plan to build the pipeline and divert effluent that would have flown into the Truckee, securing an agreement that required the Truckee Meadows Water Authority and other parties to add back several thousand acre‑feet of water to the river.  Whalen says she’s sensitive to Wadsworth’s concerns. But she says that the pipeline promises to keep a growing amount of treated wastewater out of the river, where it could otherwise contribute to rising salt levels in the lake. “I think that the pipeline from [the Truckee Meadows Water Authority] to our system is good for water quality in the river,” she says. “I understand philosophically the concerns about data centers, but the general improvement district is dedicated to working with everyone on the river for regional water-resource planning—and the tribe is no exception.” Water efficiency  In an email, Thompson added that he has “great respect and admiration,” for the tribe and has visited the reservation several times in an effort to help bring industrial or commercial development there. He stressed that all of the business park’s groundwater was “validated by the State Water Engineer,” and that the rights to surface water and effluent were purchased “for fair market value.”During the earlier interview at the industrial center, he and Gilman had both expressed confidence that tenants in the park have adequate water supplies, and that the businesses won’t draw water away from other areas.  “We’re in our own aquifer, our own water basin here,” Thompson said. “You put a straw in the ground here, you’re not going to pull water from Fernley or from Reno or from Silver Springs.” Gilman also stressed that data-center companies have gotten more water efficient in recent years, echoing a point others made as well. “With the newer technology, it’s not much of a worry,” says Sutich, of the Northern Nevada Development Authority. “The technology has come a long way in the last 10 years, which is really giving these guys the opportunity to be good stewards of water usage.” An aerial view of the cooling tower fans at Google’s data center in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.GOOGLE Indeed, Google’s existing Storey County facility is air-cooled, according to the company’s latest environmental report. The data center withdrew 1.9 million gallons in 2023 but only consumed 200,000 gallons. The rest cycles back into the water system. Google said all the data centers under construction on its campus will also “utilize air-cooling technology.” The company didn’t respond to a question about the scale of its planned expansion in the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, and referred a question about indirect water consumption to NV Energy. The search giant has stressed that it strives to be water efficient across all of its data centers, and decides whether to use air or liquid cooling based on local supply and projected demand, among other variables. Four years ago, the company set a goal of replenishing more water than it consumes by 2030. Locally, it also committed to provide half a million dollars to the National Forest Foundation to improve the Truckee River watershed and reduce wildfire risks.  Microsoft clearly suggested in earlier news reports that the Silver Springs land it purchased around the end of 2022 would be used for a data center. NAI Alliance’s market real estate report identifies that lot, as well as the parcel Microsoft purchased within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center, as data center sites. But the company now declines to specify what it intends to build in the region.  “While the land purchase is public knowledge, we have not disclosed specific details [of] our plans for the land or potential development timelines,” wrote Donna Whitehead, a Microsoft spokesperson, in an email.  Workers have begun grading land inside a fenced off lot within the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.EMILY NAJERA Microsoft has also scaled down its global data-center ambitions, backing away from several projects in recent months amid shifting economic conditions, according to various reports. Whatever it ultimately does or doesn’t build, the company stresses that it has made strides to reduce water consumption in its facilities. Late last year, the company announced that it’s using “chip-level cooling solutions” in data centers, which continually circulate water between the servers and chillers through a closed loop that the company claims doesn’t lose any water to evaporation. It says the design requires only a “nominal increase” in energy compared to its data centers that rely on evaporative water cooling. Others seem to be taking a similar approach. EdgeCore also said its 900,000-square-foot data center at the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center will rely on an “air-cooled closed-loop chiller” that doesn’t require water evaporation for cooling.  But some of the companies seem to have taken steps to ensure access to significant amounts of water. Switch, for instance, took a lead role in developing the effluent pipeline. In addition, Tract, which develops campuses on which third-party data centers can build their own facilities, has said it lined up more than 1,100 acre-feet of water rights, the equivalent of nearly 360 million gallons a year.  Apple, Novva, Switch, Tract, and Vantage didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.  Coming conflicts  The suggestion that companies aren’t straining water supplies when they adopt air cooling is, in many cases, akin to saying they’re not responsible for the greenhouse gas produced through their power use simply because it occurs outside of their facilities. In fact, the additional water used at a power plant to meet the increased electricity needs of air cooling may exceed any gains at the data center, Ren, of UC Riverside, says. “That’s actually very likely, because it uses a lot more energy,” he adds. That means that some of the companies developing data centers in and around Storey County may simply hand off their water challenges to other parts of Nevada or neighboring states across the drying American West, depending on where and how the power is generated, Ren says.  Google has said its air-cooled facilities require about 10% more electricity, and its environmental report notes that the Storey County facility is one of its two least-energy-efficient data centers.  Pipes running along Google’s data center campus help the search company cool its servers.GOOGLE Some fear there’s also a growing mismatch between what Nevada’s water permits allow, what’s actually in the ground, and what nature will provide as climate conditions shift. Notably, the groundwater committed to all parties from the Tracy Segment basin—a long-fought-over resource that partially supplies the TRI General Improvement District—already exceeds the “perennial yield.” That refers to the maximum amount that can be drawn out every year without depleting the reservoir over the long term. “If pumping does ultimately exceed the available supply, that means there will be conflict among users,” Roerink, of the Great Basin Water Network, said in an email. “So I have to wonder: Who could be suing whom? Who could be buying out whom? How will the tribe’s rights be defended?”The Truckee Meadows Water Authority, the community-owned utility that manages the water system for Reno and Sparks, said it is planning carefully for the future and remains confident there will be “sufficient resources for decades to come,” at least within its territory east of the industrial center. Storey County, the Truckee-Carson Irrigation District, and the State Engineer’s office didn’t respond to questions or accept interview requests.  Open for business As data center proposals have begun shifting into Northern Nevada’s cities, more local residents and organizations have begun to take notice and express concerns. The regional division of the Sierra Club, for instance, recently sought to overturn the approval of Reno’s first data center, about 20 miles west of the Tahoe Reno Industrial Center.  Olivia Tanager, director of the Sierra Club’s Toiyabe Chapter, says the environmental organization was shocked by the projected electricity demands from data centers highlighted in NV Energy’s filings. Nevada’s wild horses are a common sight along USA Parkway, the highway cutting through the industrial business park. EMILY NAJERA “We have increasing interest in understanding the impact that data centers will have to our climate goals, to our grid as a whole, and certainly to our water resources,” she says. “The demands are extraordinary, and we don’t have that amount of water to toy around with.” During a city hall hearing in January that stretched late into the evening, she and a line of residents raised concerns about the water, energy, climate, and employment impacts of AI data centers. At the end, though, the city council upheld the planning department’s approval of the project, on a 5-2 vote. “Welcome to Reno,” Kathleen Taylor, Reno’s vice mayor, said before casting her vote. “We’re open for business.” Where the river ends In late March, I walk alongside Chairman Wadsworth, of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe, on the shores of Pyramid Lake, watching a row of fly-fishers in waders cast their lines into the cold waters.  The lake is the largest remnant of Lake Lahontan, an Ice Age inland sea that once stretched across western Nevada and would have submerged present-day Reno. But as the climate warmed, the lapping waters retreated, etching erosional terraces into the mountainsides and exposing tufa deposits around the lake, large formations of porous rock made of calcium-carbonate. That includes the pyramid-shaped island on the eastern shore that inspired the lake’s name. A lone angler stands along the shores of Pyramid Lake. In the decades after the US Reclamation Service completed the Derby Dam in 1905, Pyramid Lake declined another 80 feet and nearby Winnemucca Lake dried up entirely. “We know what happens when water use goes unchecked,” says Wadsworth, gesturing eastward toward the range across the lake, where Winnemucca once filled the next basin over. “Because all we have to do is look over there and see a dry, barren lake bed that used to be full.”In an earlier interview, Wadsworth acknowledged that the world needs data centers. But he argued they should be spread out across the country, not densely clustered in the middle of the Nevada desert.Given the fierce competition for resources up to now, he can’t imagine how there could be enough water to meet the demands of data centers, expanding cities, and other growing businesses without straining the limited local supplies that should, by his accounting, flow to Pyramid Lake. He fears these growing pressures will force the tribe to wage new legal battles to protect their rights and preserve the lake, extending what he refers to as “a century of water wars.” “We have seen the devastating effects of what happens when you mess with Mother Nature,” Wadsworth says. “Part of our spirit has left us. And that’s why we fight so hard to hold on to what’s left.”
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  • Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks

    Martian mystery

    Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks

    Alas, these probably are not reservoirs of life.

    Eric Berger



    May 20, 2025 6:45 am

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    This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars.

    Credit:

    European Space Agency

    This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars.

    Credit:

    European Space Agency

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    Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder.

    One of the longest-standing mysteries about Mars has been the presence of dark and light streaks on the rolling hills surrounding Olympus Mons. This week's image, from the European Space Agency, shows some of these streaks captured last October.
    This massive mountain rises about 22 km above the surface of Mars, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. It is bordered by hummocky deposits, called aureoles, that were formed by landslides from the mountain. A striking feature of these aureoles is the periodic appearance of bright and dark streaks—sometimes for days and sometimes for years.
    For decades, scientists have wondered what they might be.
    The streaks look remarkably like flowing water. Initially, scientists believed these features might be flows of salty water or brine, which remained liquid long enough to travel down the aureole. This offered the tantalizing possibility that life might yet exist on the surface of Mars in these oases.
    However, it now appears that this is not the case. According to new research published Monday in Nature Communications, these slopes are dry, likely due to layers of fine dust suddenly sliding off steep terrain. To reach this conclusion, the researchers used a machine learning algorithm to scan and catalog streaks across 86,000 satellite images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They created a map of 500,000 streaks across the surface of Mars. In doing so, the researchers found no evidence of water.
    The image in today's post comes from the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and it has been slightly modified to enhance the appearance of the streaks. It looks like art.
    Source: European Space Agency
    Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello.

    Eric Berger
    Senior Space Editor

    Eric Berger
    Senior Space Editor

    Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston.

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    #tuesday #telescope #finally #some #answers
    Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks
    Martian mystery Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks Alas, these probably are not reservoirs of life. Eric Berger – May 20, 2025 6:45 am | 0 This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars. Credit: European Space Agency This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars. Credit: European Space Agency Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder. One of the longest-standing mysteries about Mars has been the presence of dark and light streaks on the rolling hills surrounding Olympus Mons. This week's image, from the European Space Agency, shows some of these streaks captured last October. This massive mountain rises about 22 km above the surface of Mars, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. It is bordered by hummocky deposits, called aureoles, that were formed by landslides from the mountain. A striking feature of these aureoles is the periodic appearance of bright and dark streaks—sometimes for days and sometimes for years. For decades, scientists have wondered what they might be. The streaks look remarkably like flowing water. Initially, scientists believed these features might be flows of salty water or brine, which remained liquid long enough to travel down the aureole. This offered the tantalizing possibility that life might yet exist on the surface of Mars in these oases. However, it now appears that this is not the case. According to new research published Monday in Nature Communications, these slopes are dry, likely due to layers of fine dust suddenly sliding off steep terrain. To reach this conclusion, the researchers used a machine learning algorithm to scan and catalog streaks across 86,000 satellite images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They created a map of 500,000 streaks across the surface of Mars. In doing so, the researchers found no evidence of water. The image in today's post comes from the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and it has been slightly modified to enhance the appearance of the streaks. It looks like art. Source: European Space Agency Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello. Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 0 Comments #tuesday #telescope #finally #some #answers
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    Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks
    Martian mystery Tuesday Telescope: Finally, some answers on those Martian streaks Alas, these probably are not reservoirs of life. Eric Berger – May 20, 2025 6:45 am | 0 This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars. Credit: European Space Agency This image covers an area of approximately 50 square km on Mars. Credit: European Space Agency Story text Size Small Standard Large Width * Standard Wide Links Standard Orange * Subscribers only   Learn more Welcome to the Tuesday Telescope. There is a little too much darkness in this world and not enough light—a little too much pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let other publications offer you a daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we’ll take a different route, finding inspiration from very real images of a universe that is filled with stars and wonder. One of the longest-standing mysteries about Mars has been the presence of dark and light streaks on the rolling hills surrounding Olympus Mons. This week's image, from the European Space Agency, shows some of these streaks captured last October. This massive mountain rises about 22 km above the surface of Mars, more than twice as high as Mount Everest on Earth. It is bordered by hummocky deposits, called aureoles, that were formed by landslides from the mountain. A striking feature of these aureoles is the periodic appearance of bright and dark streaks—sometimes for days and sometimes for years. For decades, scientists have wondered what they might be. The streaks look remarkably like flowing water. Initially, scientists believed these features might be flows of salty water or brine, which remained liquid long enough to travel down the aureole. This offered the tantalizing possibility that life might yet exist on the surface of Mars in these oases. However, it now appears that this is not the case. According to new research published Monday in Nature Communications, these slopes are dry, likely due to layers of fine dust suddenly sliding off steep terrain. To reach this conclusion, the researchers used a machine learning algorithm to scan and catalog streaks across 86,000 satellite images from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. They created a map of 500,000 streaks across the surface of Mars. In doing so, the researchers found no evidence of water. The image in today's post comes from the European Space Agency's ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and it has been slightly modified to enhance the appearance of the streaks. It looks like art. Source: European Space Agency Do you want to submit a photo for the Daily Telescope? Reach out and say hello. Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger Senior Space Editor Eric Berger is the senior space editor at Ars Technica, covering everything from astronomy to private space to NASA policy, and author of two books: Liftoff, about the rise of SpaceX; and Reentry, on the development of the Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon. A certified meteorologist, Eric lives in Houston. 0 Comments
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  • Huge Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 170,000 Years

    May 19, 20253 min readHuge Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 170,000 YearsRecent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. statesBy Sascha Pare & LiveScience Finding reservoirs of hydrogen in Earth's crust could help accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Simon Dux/Alamy Stock PhotoRecent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. states.Finding such reservoirs could help accelerate a global energy transition, but until now, geologists only had a piecemeal understanding of how large hydrogen accumulations form — and where to find them."The game of the moment is to find where it has been released, accumulated and preserved," Chris Ballentine, a professor and chair of geochemistry at the University of Oxford and lead author of a new review article on hydrogen production in Earth's crust, told Live Science in an email.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Ballentine's new paper starts to answer those questions. According to the authors, Earth's crust has produced enough hydrogen over the past 1 billion years to meet our current energy needs for 170,000 years. What's still unclear is how much of that hydrogen could be accessed and profitably extracted.In the new review, published Tuesdayin the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, the researchers draw up an "ingredient" list of geological conditions that stimulate the creation and build-up of natural hydrogen gas belowground, which should make it easier to hunt for reservoirs."The specific conditions for hydrogen gas accumulation and production are what a number of exploration companiesare looking at carefully and this will vary for different geological environments," Ballentine said.Natural hydrogen reservoirs require three key elements to form: a source of hydrogen, reservoir rocks and natural seals that trap the gas underground. There are a dozen natural processes that can create hydrogen, the simplest being a chemical reaction that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen — and any type of rock that hosts at least one of these processes is a potential hydrogen source, Ballentine said."One place that is attracting a lot of interest is in Kansas where a feature called the mid continental rift, formed about 1 billion years ago, created a huge accumulation of rocksthat can react with water to form hydrogen," he said. "The search is on here for geological structures that may have trapped and accumulated the hydrogen generated."Based on knowledge of how other gases are released from rocks underground, the review's authors suggest that tectonic stress and high heat flow may release hydrogen deep inside Earth's crust. "This helps to bring the hydrogen to the near surface where it might accumulate and form a commercial resource," Ballentine said.Within the crust, a wide range of common geological contexts could prove promising for exploration companies, the review found, ranging from ophiolite complexes to large igneous provinces and Archaean greenstone belts.An ophiolitic landscape in Italy's Sondrio province. The rocks are rich in iron, which gives them a reddish-brown color.Michele D'Amico supersky77/Getty ImagesOphiolites are chunks of Earth's crust and upper mantle that once sat beneath the ocean, but were later thrust onto land. In 2024, researchers discovered a massive hydrogen reservoir within an ophiolite complex in Albania. Igneous rocks are those solidified from magma or lava, and Archaean greenstone belts are up to 4 billion-year-old formations that are characterized by green minerals, such as chlorite and actinolite.The conditions discussed in the review are the "first principles" for hydrogen exploration, study co-author Jon Gluyas, a professor of geoenergy, carbon capture and storage at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement. The research outlines the key ingredients that companies should consider when developing their exploration strategies, including processes through which hydrogen might migrate or be destroyed underground."We know for example that underground microbes readily feast on hydrogen," co-author Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Toronto, said in the statement. So environments where bacteria could come in contact with hydrogen-producing rocks may not be great places to look for reservoirs, Sherwood Lollar said.Hydrogen is used to make key industrial chemicals such as methanol and ammonia, which is a component in most fertilizers. The gas could also aid the transition away from fossil fuels, as hydrogen can power both cars and power plants.But hydrogen today is produced from hydrocarbons, meaning manufacture of the gas comes with huge carbon emissions. "Clean" hydrogen from underground reservoirs has a much smaller carbon footprint, because it occurs naturally.Earth's crust produces "plenty of hydrogen," Ballentine said, and it is now a question of following the ingredient list to find it.Copyright 2025 LiveScience, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
    #huge #reservoirs #clean #hydrogen #could
    Huge Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 170,000 Years
    May 19, 20253 min readHuge Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 170,000 YearsRecent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. statesBy Sascha Pare & LiveScience Finding reservoirs of hydrogen in Earth's crust could help accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Simon Dux/Alamy Stock PhotoRecent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. states.Finding such reservoirs could help accelerate a global energy transition, but until now, geologists only had a piecemeal understanding of how large hydrogen accumulations form — and where to find them."The game of the moment is to find where it has been released, accumulated and preserved," Chris Ballentine, a professor and chair of geochemistry at the University of Oxford and lead author of a new review article on hydrogen production in Earth's crust, told Live Science in an email.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Ballentine's new paper starts to answer those questions. According to the authors, Earth's crust has produced enough hydrogen over the past 1 billion years to meet our current energy needs for 170,000 years. What's still unclear is how much of that hydrogen could be accessed and profitably extracted.In the new review, published Tuesdayin the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, the researchers draw up an "ingredient" list of geological conditions that stimulate the creation and build-up of natural hydrogen gas belowground, which should make it easier to hunt for reservoirs."The specific conditions for hydrogen gas accumulation and production are what a number of exploration companiesare looking at carefully and this will vary for different geological environments," Ballentine said.Natural hydrogen reservoirs require three key elements to form: a source of hydrogen, reservoir rocks and natural seals that trap the gas underground. There are a dozen natural processes that can create hydrogen, the simplest being a chemical reaction that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen — and any type of rock that hosts at least one of these processes is a potential hydrogen source, Ballentine said."One place that is attracting a lot of interest is in Kansas where a feature called the mid continental rift, formed about 1 billion years ago, created a huge accumulation of rocksthat can react with water to form hydrogen," he said. "The search is on here for geological structures that may have trapped and accumulated the hydrogen generated."Based on knowledge of how other gases are released from rocks underground, the review's authors suggest that tectonic stress and high heat flow may release hydrogen deep inside Earth's crust. "This helps to bring the hydrogen to the near surface where it might accumulate and form a commercial resource," Ballentine said.Within the crust, a wide range of common geological contexts could prove promising for exploration companies, the review found, ranging from ophiolite complexes to large igneous provinces and Archaean greenstone belts.An ophiolitic landscape in Italy's Sondrio province. The rocks are rich in iron, which gives them a reddish-brown color.Michele D'Amico supersky77/Getty ImagesOphiolites are chunks of Earth's crust and upper mantle that once sat beneath the ocean, but were later thrust onto land. In 2024, researchers discovered a massive hydrogen reservoir within an ophiolite complex in Albania. Igneous rocks are those solidified from magma or lava, and Archaean greenstone belts are up to 4 billion-year-old formations that are characterized by green minerals, such as chlorite and actinolite.The conditions discussed in the review are the "first principles" for hydrogen exploration, study co-author Jon Gluyas, a professor of geoenergy, carbon capture and storage at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement. The research outlines the key ingredients that companies should consider when developing their exploration strategies, including processes through which hydrogen might migrate or be destroyed underground."We know for example that underground microbes readily feast on hydrogen," co-author Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Toronto, said in the statement. So environments where bacteria could come in contact with hydrogen-producing rocks may not be great places to look for reservoirs, Sherwood Lollar said.Hydrogen is used to make key industrial chemicals such as methanol and ammonia, which is a component in most fertilizers. The gas could also aid the transition away from fossil fuels, as hydrogen can power both cars and power plants.But hydrogen today is produced from hydrocarbons, meaning manufacture of the gas comes with huge carbon emissions. "Clean" hydrogen from underground reservoirs has a much smaller carbon footprint, because it occurs naturally.Earth's crust produces "plenty of hydrogen," Ballentine said, and it is now a question of following the ingredient list to find it.Copyright 2025 LiveScience, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. #huge #reservoirs #clean #hydrogen #could
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    Huge Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 170,000 Years
    May 19, 20253 min readHuge Reservoirs of Clean Hydrogen Could Power Earth for 170,000 YearsRecent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. statesBy Sascha Pare & LiveScience Finding reservoirs of hydrogen in Earth's crust could help accelerate the energy transition away from fossil fuels. Simon Dux/Alamy Stock PhotoRecent breakthroughs suggest that hydrogen reservoirs are buried in countless regions of the world, including at least 30 U.S. states.Finding such reservoirs could help accelerate a global energy transition, but until now, geologists only had a piecemeal understanding of how large hydrogen accumulations form — and where to find them."The game of the moment is to find where it has been released, accumulated and preserved," Chris Ballentine, a professor and chair of geochemistry at the University of Oxford and lead author of a new review article on hydrogen production in Earth's crust, told Live Science in an email.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.Ballentine's new paper starts to answer those questions. According to the authors, Earth's crust has produced enough hydrogen over the past 1 billion years to meet our current energy needs for 170,000 years. What's still unclear is how much of that hydrogen could be accessed and profitably extracted.In the new review, published Tuesday (May 13) in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, the researchers draw up an "ingredient" list of geological conditions that stimulate the creation and build-up of natural hydrogen gas belowground, which should make it easier to hunt for reservoirs."The specific conditions for hydrogen gas accumulation and production are what a number of exploration companies (e.g. Koloma, funded by a consortium led by Bill Gates Breakthrough Energy fund, Hy-Terra funded by Fortescue, and Snowfox, funded by BP [British Petroleum] and RioTinto) are looking at carefully and this will vary for different geological environments," Ballentine said.Natural hydrogen reservoirs require three key elements to form: a source of hydrogen, reservoir rocks and natural seals that trap the gas underground. There are a dozen natural processes that can create hydrogen, the simplest being a chemical reaction that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen — and any type of rock that hosts at least one of these processes is a potential hydrogen source, Ballentine said."One place that is attracting a lot of interest is in Kansas where a feature called the mid continental rift, formed about 1 billion years ago, created a huge accumulation of rocks (mainly basalts) that can react with water to form hydrogen," he said. "The search is on here for geological structures that may have trapped and accumulated the hydrogen generated."Based on knowledge of how other gases are released from rocks underground, the review's authors suggest that tectonic stress and high heat flow may release hydrogen deep inside Earth's crust. "This helps to bring the hydrogen to the near surface where it might accumulate and form a commercial resource," Ballentine said.Within the crust, a wide range of common geological contexts could prove promising for exploration companies, the review found, ranging from ophiolite complexes to large igneous provinces and Archaean greenstone belts.An ophiolitic landscape in Italy's Sondrio province. The rocks are rich in iron, which gives them a reddish-brown color.Michele D'Amico supersky77/Getty ImagesOphiolites are chunks of Earth's crust and upper mantle that once sat beneath the ocean, but were later thrust onto land. In 2024, researchers discovered a massive hydrogen reservoir within an ophiolite complex in Albania. Igneous rocks are those solidified from magma or lava, and Archaean greenstone belts are up to 4 billion-year-old formations that are characterized by green minerals, such as chlorite and actinolite.The conditions discussed in the review are the "first principles" for hydrogen exploration, study co-author Jon Gluyas, a professor of geoenergy, carbon capture and storage at Durham University in the U.K., said in a statement. The research outlines the key ingredients that companies should consider when developing their exploration strategies, including processes through which hydrogen might migrate or be destroyed underground."We know for example that underground microbes readily feast on hydrogen," co-author Barbara Sherwood Lollar, a professor of Earth sciences at the University of Toronto, said in the statement. So environments where bacteria could come in contact with hydrogen-producing rocks may not be great places to look for reservoirs, Sherwood Lollar said.Hydrogen is used to make key industrial chemicals such as methanol and ammonia, which is a component in most fertilizers. The gas could also aid the transition away from fossil fuels, as hydrogen can power both cars and power plants.But hydrogen today is produced from hydrocarbons, meaning manufacture of the gas comes with huge carbon emissions. "Clean" hydrogen from underground reservoirs has a much smaller carbon footprint, because it occurs naturally.Earth's crust produces "plenty of hydrogen," Ballentine said, and it is now a question of following the ingredient list to find it.Copyright 2025 LiveScience, a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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