By: Noeka Nimmervoll, Staff Writer

Data centres at SFU were established in 2074 and have since powered the AI chatbots that help run the university. These chatbots, which range from personalized AI for individual professors to fully functioning executives, use significant amounts of energy and require immense cooling to maintain these operations.

Since its inauguration, the system has reportedly used 1,696,000,001 megawatts of energy and 2.5 million litres of water for cooling. Its effects are trickling down, as Trans Mountain executives have issued a warning to president Joy Johnson (now in hologram form) about resulting environmental concerns. Their letter calls for SFU to immediately decrease the production of heat from their data centres by 50%. They also request that SFU optimize their data cooling system to avoid a large-scale disaster at the Burnaby Mountain Tank Farm in the coming years. 

If soil and water temperatures continue to rise from the water runoff, the structures around the terminus of the Trans Mountain pipeline will be compromised. The Beep spoke to Mel McLurk, chief of the administrative office at Burnaby Trans Mountain, and Hugh Jass-Ol, data centre manager at SFU, to learn more. 

Although pipelines are built to expand and contract in response to temperature change, prolonged extreme heat exposure poses a threat to their structural integrity. “The temperatures in the soil around the pipelines reach highs of 48℃ in the summertime, which is putting significant pressure on the pipelines. The older parts that are not as equipped to manage this heat are at risk of bursting in the coming years,” said McLurk. Using fibre optic cables to collect data, McLurk reported that SFU runoff has been releasing 3000% more heat since the data centre inauguration just last year. 

With record-breaking soil temperatures, an accident may be on its way. “The Burnaby Tank Farm is especially at risk here due to large amounts of oil being stored at the terminus of the pipeline extension. If there [was] a pipeline burst and therefore an oil spill, as well as a well-timed forest fire, SFU would be at fault for the subsequent explosion, which is most likely to happen at the Burnaby Tank Farm due to its proximity to the centres,” she said. “Honestly, it’s been nice to point fingers about rising temperatures because usually we are the ones catching all the flak.”

According to Jass-Ol, the SFU data centres currently use a liquid cooling system to manage heat: water tubes directly remove heat from the CPUs and GPUs, which are the hottest sections of each data chip. The water is then rerouted to be cooled. “To save money, we made our own cooling tower for the heated water. Basically, the koi pond outside is where the hot water goes out of the data centre. From there, we throw tons of ice into the pool. 

“When the water is cooled, it gets stored in the cool water reservoir and reused. Most of the time, the ice isn’t enough to cool it, or we have too much hot water, so we’ll drain part of the pond, and the water just becomes part of our runoff,” Jass-Ol continued. 

However, this system isn’t without its sacrifices. Jass-Ol added, “We recently put out several mandates requiring all faculties and facilities at SFU to use less water and energy to make the best use of the data centre’s energy. That means no more iced drinks on campus. Additionally, we are limiting toilet flushes to one flush every three people. This should add enough water and ice to our system for proper cooling going forward.”

Human students expressed concerns over the data centre and its effects on their school experience, citing suspicions that water from the data centre is reused as drinking water. “In all the school emails, they keep saying that the water is totally safe to drink. I don’t buy it. It’s so gross and borderline hot,” said one SFU student, who wishes to stay anonymous. “It always tastes metallic, and one day last year, it totally tasted like fish,” said Tamara Bradey, another SFU student. 

Steven C. Gull, SFU’s bird-in-residence, was also recently hospitalized after he dove headfirst into the koi pond. “I was just listening to a Childish Gambino album, ready for my morning swim,” said Gull. “I didn’t realize that some outsider had destroyed my home and made the water boiling hot. I will be making a feature-length documentary about this injustice.” At the time of the interview, Gull was in the hospital getting a prosthetic beak due to the severity of the resulting water burn.

Despite objections from the Burnaby Trans Mountain team and SFU community members, the data centre “must continue [its] daily operations to make sure the data centre investment remains warranted,” said Jass-Ol.

“Trans Mountain does not predict that their farms will blow up anytime soon, they said five years the latest, which is so many years from now.”

— Hugh Jass-Ol, data center manager at SFU