The Guardian21 Jul 2026Macro
Automatically composed with AI from the cited sources
Water UK told MPs the government’s water forecasts were “fatally flawed” because they explicitly exclude datacentre demand, estimating current datacentre usage at 6.6m litres of drinking water daily across England and projecting a rise to 19.8m litres a day under the target to triple capacity by 2030. The trade body warned that more than three-quarters of UK datacentres are located in water-stressed areas of the south and east of England, where Affinity Water has reported individual site requests of up to 3m litres a day, and that major new reservoirs can take 15 years to plan and build. Water UK also pressed the government to publish a drought hierarchy setting out sectoral priorities during shortages.