Executive summary

• Following the driest July in 190 years, on 10 August 2026, 45 million people were officially in drought in England, including 27 million living under restrictions on water use.
• Amid arid conditions, the water consumption of data centres – and the lack of reliable data on annual usage – is becoming a growing concern, particularly for data centre objectors.
• The UK Government advises that data centres will need to work with regional groups to ensure that any current and future water demand is forecast and planned for appropriately.

 

It’s 6.59pm on a Friday evening, you’ve finished work for the week, the sun (fresh from its week of solar eclipse fame) is still shining, it’s warm-but-not-too-warm, and you settle down with a glass of something perfectly chilled.

Seconds later, the idyllic scene is shattered by a series of shrill alarms echoing from every house and garden nearby. An emergency alert for wildfires. 70 per cent of England is in drought. The country is entering its fifth heatwave of the year. Everything in the garden is brown and dead, and you can’t water it with a hosepipe ban. Suddenly the Pimm’s doesn’t taste so sweet; especially if you have to start rationing the ice cubes.

Across the UK right now, huge data centre expansions are clashing with local community needs; competing with housing developments for electrical grid capacity, using millions of litres of water in water-scarce areas, or facing planning rejections from local councils.

For those already opposed to data centres, the issue of water consumption will quite possibly be top of the list of objections in 2026…

Data, data, everywhere (except it isn’t)

The International Energy Agency estimated global data centre water consumption at around 560 billion litres in 2025, with about two-thirds from electricity generation.

Yet, in his report Water Use in AI and Data Centres, Rich Kenny, Co-Chair of the GDSA Planetary Impact Working Group, suggests that in the UK there’s (ironically) a lack of reliable data around water consumption that is, itself, a fundamental barrier to effective policy.

In the report, Kenny dives into the challenges and risks of data centre expansion in the UK; looking at cooling systems, electricity generation and semiconductor chip manufacturing; the reported consumption of US companies such as Google and Microsoft; government strategy; and possible ‘social-environmental implications’ such as biodiversity, local communities, and water security.

As a document that’s very easy to find for members of the public surfing the web, something that really stands out is the statement that “overall industry transparency remains low, with only two-fifths of data centre operators actively tracking their water usage metrics.”

For the layperson, this reads as information being intentionally withheld. Is now the time to open those floodgates?

Drip-down information isn’t dripping down

A study from TechUK last summer, which examined 80 UK data centres (using 73 for the final report), aimed to dispel some of the common myths and misconceptions concerning water consumption, and found that:

• 51% of surveyed sites use waterless cooling systems.
• 64% use less than 10,000 m³ of water per year – less than a typical leisure centre.
• 89% of sites either measure water use or deploy systems that do not require water for cooling.

Yet there seems to be a clear disconnect between what we know in the sector and how that information gets to, or is understood by, the public.

Plus, it can be tricky to try and explain why a data centre is going to be beneficial to a community that isn’t currently allowed to wash their cars.

The issue, then, may not simply be how much water data centres use. It’s whether the public can easily find and understand enough information to put that water use into context.

Don’t leave the public high and dry

‘Water security’ is not a new term, but it has been a hot topic this summer. With the Environment Agency estimating a shortfall of almost 5 billion litres of water per day by 2050, plugging the information gap between the data centre sector and the public has never been more crucial.

Data centres need to take a more proactive approach to:

Information – making information easy for members of the public to find and understand.

Communication – being open and transparent at a local and national level.

Collaboration – meeting with community and action groups, and including them in the process at all stages.

Reformation – showing the public that they are working with Parliament, utilities, councils and trade bodies.

We Brits are famous for talking about the weather, and this year there’s been plenty to talk about. With approximately 100 data centres in the pipeline to complete over the next few years, we need to start having better conversations in the community about the benefits of those centres – and not shy away from the difficult conversations around consumption.

After all, the question isn’t simply whether data centres use water. It’s whether we are giving communities enough information to understand how much water a particular development will use, where that water comes from, and what it means for local water security.