> we demonstrate that data centers are an overwhelmingly urban phenomenon, with 97.5% of facilities situated in metropolitan and micropolitan statistical areas
“Metropolitan area” is doing a lot of work. Every metropolitan area I’ve lived or worked in has had industrial areas, too. Those industrial areas have buildings that use a lot of electricity, water, or natural gas and produce a lot of noise.
This isn’t some unusual outcome. It’s like one of those maps that purports to show one thing but really just shows population density.
Also using N as the denominator, instead of weighting by floor area?
The point is that they create a heavy and volatile local water demand on those metropolitan areas.
Industry uses resources and they pay for those resources at significant cost. It’s not a surprise when the pipes are enabled.
Most data centres in Australia (even the announced biggest one in the Southern Hemisphere) are close to a water processing plant in an industrial zone in Sydney. The same plant that supplies 85% of Sydney with drinking water. At least there's an upgrade.
94% of the US population lives in a metropolitan or micropolitan area. There are ‘micropolitan’ areas in my state that’d I would colloquially consider rural, and there are large areas of the metropolitan area I live in that I would consider rural.