New research · June 2026

AI data centres are draining our water. Nobody is counting.

⚠️

Planning authorities across the UK, Ireland and EU are approving data centres without asking how much water they use. This is what the evidence shows.

928 million litres of water

One data centre. One year. Ireland.
Enough for 18,560 people.
No one required it to say so.

Same city. Same technology.

928 ML Meta · Clonee
evaporative cooling

2.7 ML Google · Dublin
air cooling

A 340× difference. Low-water design is possible. It is simply not required.

England

83% of England's data centre water use is already in the water-scarce South East.

The Environment Agency puts consumption at 1,125 million litres a year — and says this is an undercount. It peaks in summer. When rivers run lowest.

Slough · England

One site is licensed to take 367 million litres a year from groundwater.

In a region already classified as seriously water-stressed. Actual use does not have to be publicly disclosed.

Spain

Amazon formally applied to take 205 million litres a year from a canal during a three-year drought.

The water claim and the drought are happening at the same time.

The problem

The regulator admits it cannot predict how much water data centres will need.

The Environment Agency said so plainly. Growth is too fast. The planning system approving these sites is blind to the cumulative impact.

"The planning system asks: is this site permissible? It never asks: what happens to this river in a drought year when five data centres all draw from it at once?"

Scott Seivwright · Founder, The Firewalkers

What needs to change

→Every large data centre must publicly disclose how much water it uses, when it uses it, and what cooling system it has.

→Planning authorities must assess the cumulative impact on the whole catchment — not just one site at a time.

→If a site wants to use drinking water, it must prove no lower-water alternative was available.

→Communities must be told who pays for water infrastructure upgrades when drought hits.