The only thing that matters is the actions taken.
A dry desert environment is not very conducive to datacenter operations with regards to those first three items.
If you’re located close to the sea or an ocean, at least there’s a possibility of getting water, albeit perhaps through expensive reverse osmosis. But then you’re operating in a more humid environment where certain types of cooling systems won’t work well, because they depend on water evaporation to function.
If you’re building a multigigawatt AI datacenter, those are two types of environments that you want to avoid.
So, whether it’s Houston Texas or the UAE, I think that’s a very poor location for a datacenter.
You might not have to go to fully potable (drinkable) status to get something that will work for cooling, but there’s a lot of processing that needs to happen.
bookofjoe•8mo ago