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Excerpt:

A Pleasanton company has an unusual idea to cool data storage machines that they say uses a fraction of the energy and cuts greenhouse gasses.

But local environmentalists are against the plan because of the possible impact it could have on San Francisco Bay.

The internet actually exists in huge industrial data storage facilities located all around the world. Connect them together and you have the “cloud.” But the servers run hot, so most industrial data farms use evaporative air coolers, consuming millions of gallons of clean tap water.

“Data centers consume massive amounts of energy and massive amounts of water, and we’ve got a design that gets rid of that,” said Jim Connaughton, President and CEO of Nautilus Data Technologies.