Tech giant takes bold step to tackle invisible crisis draining billions of dollars: 'No one knows'

When there's a leaky pipe in our homes, it's a matter of locating the source and either crawling under the sink with a hope and a prayer — or calling a plumber. But when it comes to the major pipes running from water treatment plants into neighborhoods and homes, it's much more difficult to pinpoint leaks and fix them quickly.

That's why Microsoft and FIDO, an innovative water conservation startup, have partnered to use a new AI tool to detect leaks faster and save water (and the energy it takes to pump it) in the process. 

"Roughly 30% of water is lost to leaks at the global average — in some places it's dramatically higher than that," Eliza Roberts, Microsoft's Water Lead, told The Cool Down in a recent interview. 

Roberts is responsible for leading Microsoft's commitments to water stewardship around the world. And while fixing leaks sounds small, the potential impact is huge: 126 billion cubic metres are estimated to be lost to leaks every year, adding up to $39 billion down the drain every year.

"We're working with companies like FIDO to use AI and technology to identify and repair leaks in piped systems," Roberts said. She explained that typically, when there's a leak in one of these systems, "no one knows" because you can't see anything. It then becomes a costly and often time-intensive process to dig under roads and other infrastructure to try and find the source before repairs even begin.

On the other hand, FIDO's innovative AI acoustic tool essentially "listens" to water in pipes and is able to detect leaks, pinpoint their location, and rank them by size so utilities can prioritize what to repair first.

🚧 Other projects to reach ambitious "water-positive" goals 

Beyond the partnership with FIDO, Roberts mentioned there are a handful of other projects that Microsoft is funding around the world that use AI to help identify and repair water leaks.

These projects are all part of Microsoft's ambitious goal to be "water positive" by 2030 — meaning it aims to reduce its water use as well as replenish water in the water-stressed regions where the global company operates.

"Companies have different ways of defining 'water positive,' and there is no one standard as of now for what water positive should mean," Roberts explained. But for Microsoft, "we believe that it should go beyond simply replenishing more than you consume." The company also prioritizes increasing access to water for people globally, engaging in water policy, and accelerating innovation.

Now that we're halfway to 2030, Roberts reports that Microsoft is in good shape to meet those water-positive goals: "We have achieved our water access target. We provided water access and sanitation solutions to over one and a half million people across the globe."

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Microsoft is also working on 89 water-related projects with partners, communities, and innovators to help conserve and replenish water globally. You can check out the interactive map of Microsoft's current projects, which includes protecting aquifers in Texas and increasing groundwater retention in California. 

💧 Innovating to reduce data center water usage 

And as for power- and water-hungry data centers that support AI tech — which have increased the company's emissions by around 30% since 2020 — Microsoft has developed and launched much more efficient cooling solutions at the "chip level," meaning it won't need to use large amounts of water for cooling data centers anymore. 

"We fill a closed loop system with a tiny bit of water, and that can be used over and over again to cool the chip in the data center," Roberts explained. "With zero water cooling, we're able to get much more granular [and] bring that cooling directly to the chip."

The company reports this will avoid the need for more than 125 million liters of water per year per data center.

🌎 Thinking bigger picture

Recently, many enterprise-level companies have begun to scale back or stay quiet about their sustainability practices. 

However, Roberts pointed out that for Microsoft, "these investments and innovations are good for our planet, for our company, our customers, and for the communities in which we operate and the economy — and so we remain laser focused in making progress against these commitments that we set in 2020."

"It's not just a sustainability challenge," she said, "but it's also a human challenge."

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