Google has halted plans for a data center in Chile in order to change its designs.
The Associated Press reports that Google will pause the $200 million data center in Chile to address environmental concerns around the site.
The company first obtained permits in 2020 to construct the vast project in the Cerrillos area of Chile’s capital, Santiago.
However, earlier this year a Chilean environmental court partially reversed Google's permit, telling the hyperscaler to revise its application to take into account the effects of climate change, amid local pushback and water concerns over its use of the capital's strained aquifer.
Google announced Tuesday that it would revise the project to comply with more stringent environmental requirements and change its water-intensive cooling system.
“A new process will start from scratch,” Google said in a statement. “Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, and the way we design and manage our data centers is no exception.”
Google didn’t provide an updated timeline for the project.
The company will reportedly keep the location the same, and has already notified Chile’s environmental regulator of the decision to pause its permit application process.
The February ruling against the search and cloud company told Google "to incorporate the consideration of climate change's effects in the evaluation of the water component (Central Santiago Aquifer), if appropriate, taking into account a possible modification of the cooling system of the servers associated with the project."
In a statement at the time, Google said that it had submitted a change to its original design to use air cooling instead, and would "continue to collaborate with the requirements of local authorities."
Chile is 15 years into an unprecedented drought, with the government enforcing water rationing in 2022.
Google recently broke ground on a data center in Uruguay four years after its announcement. As with its Chilean site, the company was forced to rethink its design after concerns were raised about potential water use amid severe droughts in the country.
