Overview
- Water UK told MPs on Tuesday that government AI growth‑zone plans and recent forecasts “explicitly exclude” data‑centre water use and called those projections fatally flawed.
- A May House of Lords report warned England could face roughly a 5 billion litre public water shortfall by 2055 if demand and leakage are not tackled.
- The government has designated data centres as national infrastructure, which Water UK says may limit water companies’ ability to restrict their supplies in heatwaves or during hosepipe bans.
- Industry disclosures show very large absolute water draws — Amazon reported about 9.5 billion litres for 2025 — but operators use inconsistent metrics and fewer than one in three track standard water‑use effectiveness.
- Technical trade‑offs and rising local pushback are reshaping policy: closed‑loop cooling cuts on‑site evaporation but raises energy-linked water use, while regulators and communities from New York to Mumbai and Michigan are imposing moratoria, protests or legal challenges, and Water UK has proposed temporary changes to abstraction caps as a short‑term fix.