Water shortages threaten UK datacentre expansion
The UK’s water industry has warned that government AI growth plans ignore massive water demands, threatening to strand infrastructure investments and pit datacentres against households during droughts.
Water UK has told MPs that the country lacks the water supply needed for the government’s planned expansion of datacentres. The trade body branded official water forecasts as "fatally flawed" for explicitly excluding the tech sector's needs.
Datacentres require vast amounts of drinking water for cooling. Under current Environment Agency rules, facilities in England already consume 6.6 million litres daily. If the government meets its target to triple datacentre capacity by 2030, daily demand would reach 19.8 million litres.
This surge is colliding with a pre-existing supply crisis. A House of Lords report found England faces a 5 billion litre daily shortfall by 2055, and Water UK noted the current deficit is already 220 million litres worse than assumed. The trade body warned this gap is being bridged by accepting environmental damage and imposing drought restrictions on the public.
The tension is most acute in the south and east of England, where more than three-quarters of datacentres are located. Affinity Water, which serves Slough’s dense cluster of facilities, noted that some new sites are requesting 3 million litres a day—the peak demand of 3,500 homes—while the region is under a hosepipe ban.
For investors and tech firms, the water industry's intervention signals a major infrastructural risk. The planning system is built around household consumption and has not adapted to commercial users of this scale. Water UK stated that further growth in these stressed regions "may be impossible" without policy changes.
Resolving the bottleneck will not be quick. While the government highlighted record infrastructure investment and plans for nine new reservoirs, Water UK noted that major reservoirs take 15 years to build. Taking more water from the environment is the only immediate alternative, but the trade body warned this could be harmful.
The risk is compounded by the government’s decision to designate datacentres as critical national infrastructure. Jon Chappel, Water UK’s deputy director, called the government's oversight "unforgivable" and a "genuine failing of government". He warned that without a published drought hierarchy setting out sector priorities, "there will be a trade-off across society". Campaigners share this concern, fearing datacentres running chatbots could be prioritised over households during peak shortages.
