The poorest third of UK households already spend 3.7% of their income on water — more than twice the national average of 1.6%. The data centre boom does not create that gap. It pushes on the exact point where it already hurts most. And the people it pushes hardest are the ones least likely to benefit.
We have just published research on the affordability of the data centre boom across the UK, Ireland and Europe. The headline finding is simple, and it is uncomfortable. The cost of building the power and water systems this boom needs does not vanish. It lands on household bills — and it lands hardest on the families with the least room to absorb it.
Here is why it is regressive by design. A struggling family does not get a cheaper unit of electricity than a wealthy one. So when wholesale prices rise to pay for new power stations and grid upgrades, the same percentage increase eats a much bigger slice of a low-income budget. A 1% rise is a rounding error for an affluent household. For a poor one, it is a choice between heating and food.
And the bills are set to rise. Ofgem has warned that around 140 proposed UK data centre projects could need about 50 gigawatts of power — roughly 5 GW above the entire country's peak demand of 45 GW. Connecting that load means major investment in substations and lines. Build it on the assumption of demand that may never fully arrive, and it is ordinary billpayers who cover the gap.
We can already see where this leads. In Virginia — the world's densest cluster of data centres — residential electricity bills have risen by close to 30% since 2021, faster than inflation. The state's own auditors found that almost all of its projected demand growth is driven by data centres, not by people or electric cars. Virginia's regulator has now forced large data centre users to pay a minimum share of the capacity they book, specifically to protect everyone else.
Closer to home, the imbalance is sharper still. Under the UK's AI Growth Zone rules, a single 500-megawatt data centre in Scotland could receive up to £80 million a year in power-cost support. The promise is that this support pays for itself. Perhaps it will. But that is a forecast, not a guarantee — and if it is wrong, the public carries the risk while a private operator keeps the discount. The reward is private. The risk is socialised.
One number is missing from the whole UK debate: how much this adds to the average household bill. Nobody has published it. That silence is itself a finding. We are calling for three things — that developers fund the infrastructure their projects need, that the poorest are protected by social tariffs paid for by the industry, and that someone, finally, publishes the figure an ordinary billpayer most wants to see.
This is not a call to stop building. It is a call to be honest about who pays — before the first sod is turned.
Download these cards and share them freely. Full meme library at tools/memes.html →