The AI race threatens the UK's water resources: data centers are draining cities
The rapid scaling of artificial intelligence in the UK is encountering an unexpected yet critical obstacle—a physical shortage of water. An analysis of the situation conducted by the industry organization Water UK reveals a fatal oversight in government planning: official water consumption forecasts completely ignore the demands of data centers.
The problem is systemic. Data centers are not just consumers of electricity. They require enormous volumes of water to dissipate heat from densely packed servers. Cooling towers and systems consume resources directly, while the indirect costs of generating energy for these mega-facilities only exacerbate the situation.
Planning in a Vacuum
Water UK states outright that neither the policy on creating AI growth zones nor the "AI for Science" strategy mentions water "a single word." Even the latest national water resources program from the Environment Agency, published in June 2025, bypasses the needs of data centers. This creates a risk that further construction of data centers in water-scarce regions "may become impossible" without a radical policy overhaul.
Alarming Numbers
The situation is most acute in Slough, which has a record concentration of data centers—around 125 facilities are planned or already under construction. Local operator Affinity Water reports that some data centers request up to 3 million liters of water per day. This is equivalent to the peak consumption of a small town with 3,500 households. Meanwhile, the region is already suffering from drought, with a hose pipe ban in effect across most of it.
Under current regulations, data centers are required to use exclusively drinking water. This leads to a daily consumption of about 6.6 million liters. If the government implements plans to triple computing capacity by 2030, this figure will soar to 19.8 million liters per day.
Dead End and the Only Way Out
Water UK emphasizes that current targets for reducing leaks and cutting consumption are already "extremely ambitious." The only options are either to increase water abstraction from the environment, which would harm it, or to build new reservoirs. However, planning and constructing such infrastructure could take up to 15 years, while the AI race waits for no one.
Notably, similar problems have already forced the Governor of New York to impose a moratorium on the construction of large data centers, while in Texas, data center operators are bypassing public environmental oversight altogether.
Analyst's Comment: The situation in the UK is just the tip of the iceberg. We are witnessing a classic conflict between the pace of technological development and the planet's physical limits. The AI industry must urgently invest in closed-loop water supply systems and alternative cooling methods; otherwise, the "green" agenda of AI risks turning into an environmental disaster on a local scale.