Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Thomas Graham in Querétaro, Mexico. Photographs by Alejandra Rajal

Mexico’s datacentre industry is booming – but are more drought and blackouts the price communities must pay?

Aerial view of an industrial park in the Mexican desert
An industrial park in Colon, Querétaro, Mexico. Datacentres need water to stay cool and it is unclear to what extent this will impact the local water supplies. Photograph: Alejandra Rajal/The Guardian

In a nondescript building in an industrial park in central Mexico, cavernous rooms hold stack after stack of servers studded with blue lights, humming with computations and cooled by thousands of little fans and large vents blasting great columns of air across the room.

“Datacentres are the lungs of digital life,” says Amet Novillo, the managing director of Equinix Mexico, a digital infrastructure company, as he stands in the middle of the airflows that stop the hardware overheating.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.