The Next Thing To Ruin The UK's Water Supply Isn't What You Think
Recently, the Environment Agency (EA) warned that unless our water is 'carefully managed, England will run out of this precious resource at the times we most need it.'
But our water demands are only rising, they add, partly due to population growth but also thanks to 'the servicing of new technologies, such as the cooling of data centres powering AI.'
Speaking to The Guardian, an EA source revealed that the AI boom means the body cannot accurately predict future water consumption, making it hard to plan for the future (per the publication, data centres don't have to report how much water they use to cool servers).
DataCentreReview.com shared that the water needed to keep data centres cool is as much as 360,000L in large centres. A study suggests AI-specific water demands could reach 6.6 billion cubic metres by 2027, 'which is more than the total annual water withdrawal of 4-6 Denmark or half of the United Kingdom.'
The news comes after our warmest spring on record and the driest in over 50 years.
The EA warned that if nothing changes, we could be short of 5 billion litres a day by 2055 in the UK.
This is not only due to AI use. But some think the boom will have an outsized impact on the risk and make it harder to plan for emergencies.
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Jonathan Niesel, AI Advisor for Greenpeace, said: 'AI's environmental footprint goes beyond energy. Cooling data centres require large quantities of water – according to our projections, data centres worldwide consumed 175 billion litres of water in 2023.
'Consumption is forecast to more than triple by 2030, with this trend mainly driven by AI-specific data centres,' he continued, pointing to a report compiled for Greenpeace by the Öko-Institut.
'As extended droughts are becoming more frequent, AI developers must take responsibility for their supply chains, minimise their water consumption and ensure that local communities do not suffer shortages as a consequence of their thirst.'
This year, Prime Minister Kier Starmer and Labour announced plans to 'unleash' more AI into the private sector, fast-tracking the planning of 'thirsty' data centres in 'growth zones' across the UK.
The EA also said that water companies should halve the amount of water lost through leaks.
It wants to increase the number of reservoirs in the UK, build desalination plants (which make seawater drinkable), and get water from the wettest parts of the UK to the driest.
EA chairman, Alan Lovell, said: 'The nation's water resources are under huge and steadily increasing pressure. This deficit threatens not only the water from your tap but also economic growth and food production.
'Taking water unsustainably from the environment will have a disastrous impact on our rivers and wildlife.
'We need to tackle these challenges head-on and strengthen work on coordinated action to preserve this precious resource and our current way of life.'
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