5,000 signatures reached
To: Provincial Ministers of Environment
Regulate the water and energy use of cryptocurrency and AI data centers
Introduce regulations that require tech companies to disclose the environmental impacts of their data centers and restrict the amount of electricity and water they can use.
Why is this important?
Tech operations like crypto currency centers in Canada are guzzling millions of liters water.
Digital operations like cryptocurrency and AI rely heavily on large data centers – which use large amounts of electricity, and also water to cool down computers (also known as “servers”).
The latest estimate, from three years ago, is that 127 billion liters of water is used for cryptocurrency operations per year– enough to supply a million Canadian homes. But assessing the true impact is almost impossible because cryptocurrency and data centers in Canada aren’t required to register or restrict how much water or electricity they use.
Already this summer we’ve seen effects of water shortages – like in Alberta – which could regularly become a new normal as the effects of runaway climate change intensify. It’s high time we reckon with the environmental and resource-intensive impact of Big Tech.