We are still waiting to see if the AI revolution will be the ruination of humanity or its salvation, or if the sacrificing of low-level jobs will be worth the leaps and bounds in productivity brought by our robot coworkers. But something that hasn't gotten enough attention is whether the entire enterprise is even sustainable, given how the computing power currently required, scaled upwards, uses incredible amounts of energy.

And in addition to energy in the form of electrical power, new AI data centers like one owned by Meta in Newton County, Georgia and discussed in this New York Times piece today, use a huge amount of water. The Times reporting points to the fact that Meta, along with competitors like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, have sought to locate their data centers in places around the country where electricity comes cheap. But they haven't really addressed the water needs of these facilities, which need large amounts of water to power cooling systems that keep all those acres of machines doing kids' English class homework from overheating.

Meta's Georgia facility, per the Times, "guzzles around 500,000 gallons of water a day," or about 10 percent of the total water used in the small community surrounding it. A couple who is unfortunate enough to own a home that sits 1,000 feet from where the data center was built claims that its 2019 construction clogged their groundwater with sediment, causing their well to go dry at different times in the last few years, and requiring them to spend thousands of dollars — in addition to stocking up on bottled water all the time because they don't trust the water for drinking anymore.

Meta, of course, denies that their facility has any impact on its neighbors. And while the homeowner claims that a Facebook employee told her just to boil her water before using it, the company denies that any employee ever said this.

Larger data centers will continue to seek even larger amounts of water, which is more of a finite if not scarce resource for some communities. The Times suggests that, for many, it's an afterthought or inconvenient truth for poorer municipalities enticed by the tax revenue from data centers being built — and they can always draw more power into their grid by adding solar, or wind power, but finding more water to run these cooling systems could be tougher.

An explainer from MIT published earlier this year details the massive increase in energy use spurred by generative AI, with scientists estimating "that the power requirements of data centers in North America increased from 2,688 megawatts at the end of 2022 to 5,341 megawatts at the end of 2023" and they're only continuing to climb.

"The demand for new data centers cannot be met in a sustainable way," says Noman Bashir, who wrote a paper on the environmental impacts of generative AI. "The pace at which companies are building new data centers means the bulk of the electricity to power them must come from fossil fuel-based power plants."

Regarding water usage, Bashir adds, "Just because this is called ‘cloud computing’ doesn’t mean the hardware lives in the cloud. Data centers are present in our physical world, and because of their water usage they have direct and indirect implications for biodiversity."

Bashir suggests that it is the responsibility of AI companies to let users know just how much computing power, and therefore how much of a environmental footprint, their simple chatbot tasks can require, so that they can better decide if it's worth those impacts.

Bay Area companies are leading the charge in sustainable tech: Nokia expands its semiconductor hub to San Jose; Lightmatter unveils an energy-efficient AI processor; Savor Foods introduces carbon-based butter; and Longshot Space develops a low-cost, cargo space launch system.

Nokia is expanding in the semiconductor market with a new photonic chip production hub in San Jose, creating up to 200 tech jobs. The facility, which is part of Nokia's strategy after acquiring Infinera, aims to meet the growing demands of AI while reducing environmental impact.

Photonic chips use light instead of electrical signals, producing less heat than traditional chips. This improves energy efficiency and reduces the need for expensive cooling systems, lowering data center carbon footprints. By advancing photonic semiconductors, Nokia is driving innovation in sustainable, high-performance computing.

The expansion is supported by $40 million in federal funding from the CHIPS and Science legislation. The project will also create construction jobs as the building gets renovated.

On a related note, Silicon Valley startup Lightmatter has unveiled a new AI processor that uses light, rather than electricity, to perform computations — a promising step toward energy-efficient processing. The chip, called Passage M1000, was developed in partnership with GlobalFoundries and is designed to reduce the energy demands of complex machine learning tasks by generating less heat and requiring less cooling.

While early results suggest potential efficiency gains, widespread impact could take years as the technology matures and scales. Still, Lightmatter’s approach reflects growing momentum toward more sustainable AI infrastructure.

San Jose-based startup Savor Foods, backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, has launched a sustainable butter made entirely from carbon — no animal or plant-based oils included. Using captured carbon dioxide and hydrogen from water, Savor produces fat molecules chemically identical to those found in milk, meat, and vegetable oils.

The butter alternative is already turning heads in top bakeries and Michelin-starred restaurants and aims to replace high-impact fats like palm oil in packaged foods. With FDA self-affirmation in place, Savor plans to scale production at its new Illinois facility and is working with major food companies to co-develop customizable ingredients.

The process uses a fraction of the water and land of traditional agriculture and releases no greenhouse gases—marking a major step toward a more sustainable global food system.

Longshot Space is rethinking how we send cargo to space — not with rockets, but with a giant gas-powered launch system. The startup recently raised over $5 million to build a 500-meter prototype in the Nevada desert.

Designed for rugged, non-fragile payloads that can withstand extreme acceleration, the system isn’t suitable for people or sensitive equipment. But for the right use cases, it could offer a lower-cost, lower-emissions alternative to traditional launches.

Instead of burning rocket fuel, Longshot uses compressed gas to push payloads to hypersonic speeds. If successful at scale, the company says it could reduce launch costs to $10 per kilogram — a major drop from the $6,000 charged by SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Longshot isn’t aiming to replace rockets but to carve out a niche in fast, cost-effective, and potentially more sustainable cargo launches. Backed by the U.S. Department of Defense, the team is awaiting FAA approval to begin construction.

Image: US Department of Energy/Raw Pixel

Bay Area staple, Hog Island Oyster Co., is set to be featured during tomorrow’s Super Bowl, representing California in Google’s 50 States, 50 Stories commercial. The campaign highlights small businesses across the country and how they utilize AI to support sustainability and growth.

Founded over 40 years ago by marine biologist John Finger, Hog Island has grown from a modest oyster farm in Tomales Bay to managing 250 acres of intertidal land and harvesting over 5 million oysters and Manila clams annually. The company has built its reputation on high-quality, sustainably farmed shellfish, using methods like tipping bags and the “rack and bag” system, which harness natural tidal movements to enhance oyster growth while reducing manual labor.

While committed to traditional farming techniques, Hog Island has embraced AI as a tool to streamline operations. With Google Gemini, Hog Island now analyzes decades of data on inventory, weather patterns, and oyster growth cycles—tasks that were once time-consuming and labor-intensive.

Finger sees AI not as a replacement for hands-on expertise but as a way to enhance decision-making, ensuring Hog Island remains at the forefront of sustainable aquaculture while allowing his team to focus on what they do best: growing world-class oysters and connecting with their community.

Image: Oyster Bar Mix, Hog Island Oyster Co., Ferry Building Marketplace, San Francisco; Yuichi Sakuraba/Flickr

A new trend in sustainable brewing that I hadn't heard about: turning wastewater, or gray water, into beer. The Bay Area's Half Moon Bay Brewing already tried this trick last fall, in an effort to show how the brewery could reduce its drinking water consumption. Now researchers in Belgium have come up with a solar-powered machine that, through a very simple process, turns urine into drinkable water, which they then want to use to make beer.

As Reuters reports, University of Ghent researcher Sebastiaan Derese and his team have built a machine that can operate off the grid to provide a new source of drinking water in developing countries. It uses a solar-powered boiler to heat the urine which is then passed through a membrane to separate out any potassium, nitrogen, phosphorus or other minerals — which can then be used as fertilizer.

NASA has developed a similar device that's been used on the International Space Station to recycle urine and sweat into drinking water, but Derese's machine is being employed in a more fun and useful capacity: turning about 1,000 liters of urine from attendees at a music and theater festival in Ghent, much of it likely derived from beer drinking, back into beer. The beer hasn't been made yet, but Derese is trying to find a brewer willing to try it, using all this recycled water.

"We call it from sewer to brewer," Derese says.

CNet points out that this machine is almost exactly like what Kevin Costner's character rigs up in Waterworld to recycle his pee.

It may sound gross — yep, I agree! — but a blind taste test of two versions of the Half Moon Bay beer last fall, one brewed with gray water and the other with normal drinking water, proved the recycled-water version passed muster and even tasted less hoppy and bitter. And it could be a good solution for beer-makers when it comes to water usage, since it typically requires three or more gallons of water to make one gallon of beer.

It's currently illegal in California, however, to reuse gray water in taps or to sell any products made with it.

Related: The 15 Best Beers From Local Bay Area Breweries

For a recycling scavenger whom CBS 5 is calling by the pseudonym "Daniel", it all boils down to the weight of his haul. The cans and bottles he scores from dumpsters in alleys behind San Francisco's downtown offices all hit the scale when he cashes them in at local redemption centers, and if he's doing it right, Daniel can make $1,000 a week, and about $48,0000 a year, or so he tells the station.

Daniel and scavengers like him might be unique in the current statewide California Redemption Value deposit system, instituted in 1987 — they're making money. The system is what Recycling Today calls "an outdated compensation method" that's lagged as scrap values for PET (polyethylene terephthalate), glass, and aluminum have spiraled downward for the past four years.

As the nonprofit Container Recycling Institute tells Recycling Today, certified redemption centers handle almost 90 percent of the state's 18 billion recyclable bottles. However, in the last year, 269 of them have closed, leaving 1,800 remaining.

“When it comes to falling scrap prices, these small redemption centers are the proverbial 'canaries in the coal mine,'" Institute president Susan Collins tells Recycling Today.

To subsidize the redemption centers, the state's recycling program, CalRecycle, issues “processing payments” to them. Even with those, “It’s really, really, really, difficult to stay in business,” the owner of Our Planet Recycling in San Francisco tells the station.

According to Collins, "If the current downward commodity pricing trend continues without structural adjustments to the state’s processing payment formula, recycling centers’ cumulative net losses will inevitably force more of them out of business." The cost of that? "Additional closures will mean not only more job losses and lost recycling opportunities, but a real loss to the people of California, to the sustainable economy and to the environment,” Collins says

Experts like Jennifer Mangold of UC Berkeley’s Laboratory for Manufacturing and Sustainability agree that the status quo isn't sustainable. But something's got to give. #8220;It’ll have to be funded somehow, by consumers or legislation, or government agencies," she says. "[Somehow] it will have to be funded to make economic sense,”

Still, for the Daniels out there, commodities prices and subsidies be damned. That CRV refund stays the same: 5 cents for every container under 24 ounces, and 10 cents for ones of 24 ounces or more.