there’s no magic to IREN: they’re simply using massive refrigeration units to chill the closed-loop circulating cooling water, which requires ~10 times the amount of electrical energy compared to an evaporative cooling unit with the same cooling capacity ...
data centers stuffed with tons of ICs are basically nothing more than gimungus toasters from an energy perspective: every megawatt/hour consumed to operate the ICs is converted into a megawatt/hour of waste heat ...
those megawatt/hours of waste heat can be removed either by evaporative cooling or by conventional refrigeration that consumes ten times the energy that evaporative cooling uses, plus conventional refrigeration itself generates 20-30% additional waste heat for every BTU of cooling power produced ... as a consequence, evaporative cooling is the greenest of green methods for cooling ...
two things: 1) I wonder if there is some way to use that excess heat in a useful way (e.g., heating buildings, desalinization, etc.), and 2) I’m not sure being “green” is a key objective, unless that includes minimizing the use of ground water.