Data centers while immensely useful especially in the world of cloud storage have also been associated with being damaging to the environment due to the amount of power they require. They not only require power to run the servers but at the same time they require power to keep the servers cool 24/7.
In its part to contribute towards a greener environment, Google has just completed their data center in Finland, which instead of relying on blasting cold air in the data center to keep the servers cool, uses green seawater as its cooling method instead. If you were to picture it, you could think of the data center as one giant CPU with the green seawater as the liquid cooling system around it.
The data center was built off an old paper mill and Google decided to make use of the existing seawater intake tunnel that was built beneath it. The water then travels to a heat transfer station which will help to keep the data center cool. Given how Google last year used 2.26 terawatt hours of electricity last year, which basically amounted to about 200,000 American households worth, it will be interesting to see how much less they will be able to use now with their new data center and its seawater cooling system.