data centre potable water use in England to provide insights and tangible policy recommendations to improve water efficiency
This study explored potable water use by data centres in England and provided informative and valuable insights, linked to tangible policy and industry recommendations to improve sector water efficiency
data centre potable water use in England to provide insights and tangible policy recommendations to improve water efficiency
that English data centre water use accounts for 0.2% of the non-household market, but this is increasing
recommendations to promote water efficiency and support sustainable sector growth
Client name: MOSL on behalf of the Strategic Panel's Market Improvement Fund
MOSL is the market operator for the non-household water retail market in England, which opened in April 2017 enabling more than 1.2 million business customers to choose who supplies their retail water and wastewater services.
This project was initiated in response to the limited understanding of data centre water use within England and the potential implications of their rapid growth for water scarcity. Data centres have been increasingly criticised globally for their use of water for cooling, particularly in areas that are having to conserve water due to drought.
Data centres play a key role in the UK Government’s AI growth ambitions, but concerns have been raised about the increase in data centres, particularly those housing AI, and how this could exacerbate water scarcity, particularly in regions already considered water stressed.
The project was funded by the Market Improvement Fund, which was set up to fund innovative projects that will benefit the non-household water market and its customers. The fund is overseen by the Strategic Panel (including project selection, funding allocation and progress of work) and administered by MOSL.
This project explored what efficient water use looked like in data centres and how it could be driven in England. We reviewed and assessed operational water usage in data centres across England, policy and standards relating to the management of water use in data centres, and international data centre water use benchmarking and reporting approaches. This was done though a mix of evidence review, stakeholder engagement and analysis of existing water use data, including data provided by MOSL from their CMOS database.
We found that there would be benefits to England adopting a reporting framework and putting in place a series of policy interventions to allow for easier benchmarking of data centre water consumption, suggesting that England could mandate centralised reporting of (at least a subset of) the metrics required under the European Energy Efficiency Directive. Other recommendations included exploring minimum performance standards, planning system reform, registration of data centres and other Critical National Infrastructure, and improved communication between data centre operators, designers and water retailers and wholesalers.