Google has indicated its planned 1-gigawatt data centre in Visakhapatnam (a major port city on India's southeastern coast), developed in partnership with Tata Consultancy Services, will rely on air-cooling technology rather than water-based systems, following pressure from local communities and civil society groups. Air-cooling works by dissipating the substantial heat generated by millions of processors — each containing billions of transistors — using airflow rather than large volumes of water. While the approach reduces water consumption, engineers note it involves significant trade-offs, including lower cooling efficiency at scale, making it a technically demanding choice for a facility of this size.