UK AI data center push faces water planning gap

The UK government’s plan to expand AI infrastructure does not account for the water demand of data centers in England’s official planning framework, according to evidence submitted by Water UK to MPs. The gap matters because the UK already has Europe’s largest data center pipeline, almost twice the next-largest country’s, while parts of southern, central and eastern England face rising drought risk.

Water UK, the trade body for the country’s water companies, told a parliamentary committee that policies tied to AI Growth Zones under the government’s AI Opportunities Action Plan appear to assume adequate water supply. The group said that assumption restricts what water companies can justify building, including reservoirs, because investment plans are based on demand forecasts it says are too low.

The government is trying to make Britain an “AI superpower,” a goal that depends on more compute capacity. Water UK’s warning is that the physical requirements of that capacity, particularly cooling, are being treated as someone else’s problem. The government department responsible had not responded to The Register’s request for comment by publication time.

Water constraints are already hitting development

Water UK said some housing schemes are already being stopped and some businesses prevented from expanding because water is unavailable. It also said the Environment Agency has, in effect, blocked business expansion in East Anglia and parts of Essex because supply is so constrained.

The trade body is asking for faster approval and delivery of new supply infrastructure, a review of abstraction limits, and rules requiring data center operators to pay for the infrastructure their facilities require. It also wants minimum efficiency standards for server farms and requirements to use non-potable water where possible.

A Water UK spokesperson told The Register that the industry wants to supply data centers but cannot do so while the government excludes them from England’s water planning framework. The spokesperson said water companies have approval to build 10 reservoirs, although those projects will take years, and argued that major businesses should cover their own infrastructure costs rather than shifting them to households.

Cooling economics put water and power in tension

Data center cooling creates a trade-off between electricity use and water consumption. The Register has previously reported that when water is cheap relative to energy, operators have an incentive to use more water to cut power demand. That is a live issue in the UK because its energy prices are among the highest in the developed world.

Water UK’s submission said global data center water use is expected to more than double between 2025 and 2050, with services-heavy economies such as the UK likely to take a disproportionate share of that growth. The UK has ambitions to treble data center capacity by 2030.

A government report said more than 1,000 MW of current UK data center capacity is in and around London. Slough, Berkshire, is reportedly Europe’s largest data center cluster, with as many as 35 facilities.

Official UK data on the sector’s water consumption is limited because operators are not required to report usage. The Water Research Centre estimates that data centers in England use almost 1.9 billion liters a year. PublicTechnology reported that the Government Digital Sustainability Alliance warned last year that AI is already driving a significant and often underestimated increase in water consumption, with risks for water security in the UK and globally.

For AI infrastructure operators, the policy risk is straightforward: compute buildouts are being encouraged faster than the water system is being planned around them. For water companies and local authorities, the issue is who pays when a growth strategy assumes resources that current forecasts do not include.

This story draws on original reporting from The Register.