Data Centres: Water Resources

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd September 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I mentioned the Water Delivery Taskforce in response to the previous question. The whole point of that is to bring together government, industry and regulators to improve that evidence. We want to look at how best we can get that information from data use centres. It is early days with this at the moment, but we are very aware that we need to get this information if we are to look at the best use of our water resources. This year has clearly demonstrated that we need to look at this, and not just at data centres. Golf courses use an enormous amount more water than data centres, for example, so it is about looking at that bigger picture as well.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

The proposed data centre at Thurrock in Essex will concrete over habitat for bees, butterflies, plants and birds. It will consume up to 3 million litres of water a day in an area routinely subject to hosepipe bans. It will consume 2.65 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year and generate 570,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent every year. Which of the consequences has a low priority for the Government?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

The Government have a number of priorities. One is that we need to make sure that we underpin the digital services on which we all rely every day—your phones, your banking system, healthcare, business systems—and we need data centres to be able to do that. Also, we have a conundrum here. I am being asked about water use. Water-cooling methods use less electricity. So, again, what are we focusing on? What are the priorities? We need to encourage data centres to become more efficient and more effective. That is our priority.