Google says its India data center will use air cooling amid concerns over water use.

Google says its massive new data center in the Indian city of Visakhapatnam will use air cooling instead of water, after residents objected to the impact of the project on the environment and their lives in an area already facing water shortages. The "gigawatt-scale" artificial intelligence (AI) facility in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh is part of a $15 billion investment. It is set to open in 2028 and will be Google's biggest "AI hub" outside the United States.

Activists are demanding a moratorium on new data centers across Andhra Pradesh until there is more evidence of their effect on the environment and local communities. Visakhapatnam is the site of several planned tech projects.

Alexander Smith, Google's head of infrastructure and energy for the Asia-Pacific region, told AFP that the company's water assessment for Visakhapatnam "pointed to pressure on the local watershed." "That finding shaped our choice of cooling configuration from the outset," he said, adding that "advanced air cooling" had been chosen over water cooling. Google is committed to replenishing 120 percent of the freshwater it uses across its operations by 2030, he said.

Smith said independent environmental assessments covering power supply, water risk, ecology and noise are carried out 12 to 24 months before a project begins. "If there is insufficient power in a location, or if operating a data centre would mean taking power away from a community, Google will either find ways to develop more power, or it will not build there," he said.

Google does not disclose power capacity figures for individual sites, but Smith said it pays the full cost of required grid upgrades and plans to invest in new clean energy projects in Visakhapatnam.

As AI use accelerates, data centers are being built rapidly around the world, especially in Asia. Critics say they add to demand on power grids that still rely heavily on fossil fuels and put pressure on stretched local water supplies. In Finland, authorities recently ordered work to stop on two Google data center sites pending mandatory environmental assessments.

Opponents also say data centers bring few benefits to local residents. Smith said a development of this kind is projected to generate about $688 million a year in local economic activity, and that each job inside a Google data center supports nine more in the surrounding community. He said the city's coastline would also allow undersea cables to link it to South Africa and Australia.