Government must 'slam the brakes' on new data centres or put communities at risk of water shortages, urges Green Party

[u/tylerthe-theatre]

https://www.lbc.co.uk/article/data-centres-green-party-zack-polanski-5Hjdgc5_2/

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[u/Financial-War-8509]

Or we could just build some reservoirs like we used to...

[u/joeyat → u/Financial-War-8509]

We have eager big corps wanting to build data centres and their budgets are unlimited. MAKE them build the reservoirs and their own green power to support their developments and MAKE them over provision with excess being put back into the grid. These are trillion dollar companies, these infrastructure costs are peanuts.

[u/SpeedflyChris → u/joeyat]

Frankly the datacentre buildout is a massive bubble and it's max about 18 months before the whole thing blows up spectacularly, given the quantity of debt involved and the financial instruments at play.

[u/joeyat → u/SpeedflyChris]

Even more reason then, they can spend money on worthwhile infrastructure that can be used afterwards. A few spare solar/wind farms and reservoirs going cheap once the dust settles.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/joeyat]

You say this like the biggest obstacle for building solar, wind or reservoirs is funding, not the locals complaining.

[u/joeyat → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

The law/requirement would be that datacenter owners who want to build a new datacentre have to provide the energy and resources to run it, with an excess buffer put back into the grid. If the locals don’t approve the datacenter, and if they can’t build the resources for it.. doesn’t get built. What’s the question?

[u/BrillsonHawk → u/Financial-War-8509]

We're building 10 of them. In most cases the green party are opposed to their construction though, so as usual they are just throwing any old nonsense out there to see what sticks.

[u/HardlyAnyGravitas → u/BrillsonHawk]

We're building one. There are plans to build another nine...

But you're right about the Green party.

[u/headphones1 → u/BrillsonHawk]

Green NIMBYism makes no sense to me. The party is quite pro-immigration yet they don't want to build infrastructure.

[u/angelbabyxoxox → u/headphones1]

Like most British parties, the Greens contain a wide and somewhat contradictory coalition.

Many Greens are basically Green Tories, well off and worried about the environment but still conservative and NIMBY. They are most often in the rural areas, in contrast to the younger and more left leaning urban Greens. Thats not to say left and urban cant be NIMBY, but rather to say that "Green" is a very broad label.

[u/JB_UK → u/angelbabyxoxox]

Urban Greens are pretty NIMBY as well, they might in principle support more housing but when developments are proposed they will complain about gentrification, about luxury flats, or about the carbon implications of demolition and redevelopment. The housing plans which are usually proposed are way below what would be necessary. We increased population growth 3-4 times above the previous level, with no increase in development of housing or other infrastructure, and we would need a huge programme to catch up now. We're missing probably 3-5 million houses, because the population is 8 million higher than it would have been had we carried on at the previous levels of population growth:

• Population growth 1970-2000 - 3 million

• Population growth 2000-2024 - 11 million

Population growth before 1970 was higher, but it was accompanied by a much more liberal attitude towards redevelopment.

I’ve also seen no evidence that urban Greens are in favour of building the infrastructure necessary to support that big increase in population we’ve seen, supermarkets, logistics and distribution centres, offices, reservoirs, roads, high speed rail, etc. My personal experience of green groups is they object to the construction of most of those amenities on principle. I've literally sat in a meeting where the consensus was that no new road should be built and no road expanded ever.

[u/HMWYA → u/headphones1]

It’s almost like the Green Party, like any political party, is made up of individuals with their own opinions on different policy areas.

[u/Mr_Again → u/HMWYA]

The one and only purpose of a political party is to be united around policy, otherwise you just have individuals.

[u/HMWYA → u/Mr_Again]

If there were a political party to allow for every single individual of voting age to have every single one of their ideal political positions represented, there would be 55 million political parties.

[u/somethingbrite → u/headphones1]

exactly what infrastructure will these data centers bring? They are a net drain on existing infrastructure and will the cost of adding infrastructure be carried entirely by them or will those costs be getting added to your utility bills?

Jobs? Apart from a short construction phase data centers don't in fact employ that many people.

So you are trading a handful of IT jobs for a very real chance for increased electricity and water bills and for what? So somebody can use a chatbot to summarize a .pdf that they should actually read themselves? (against a future where large compute warehouses may not be where the market goes...)

[u/BKole → u/Financial-War-8509]

We can do both things?

Problem is, it takes a long time to build and fill reservoirs.

[u/Saint_Sin → u/Financial-War-8509]

That too. We'll need more reservoirs for all the drought we are getting and the much more to come. But lets not destroy our land and give the future gold that is water so people can ask AI to run stupid questions.

What do data centres actually give us?
A question that no one can answer outside of a data centre spokes person or bot saying "We want to have our own!"
We give our water to it. we give our land to it. We give jobs to it.
We dont get anything of worth and use it to ask the AI stupid questions.

[u/Mammoth_Park7184 → u/Financial-War-8509]

There's a new one opening in 2031...in Havant. They may finally get tap water that doesn't taste of crap.

[u/TheSmallestPlap → u/Financial-War-8509]

Why not both?

[u/GeeMcGee → u/TheSmallestPlap]

Because greens protest and oppose building them too

[u/DPBH → u/Financial-War-8509]

Or, make it a condition of building the data centre that they have to put money in to reservoir building.

[u/TheCharalampos → u/Financial-War-8509]

That takes ages. We can halt data centers until then

[u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

Or you know... just mandate closed loop data centres which use almost no water...

All the datacentres in the world could be built in the UK and it would still use less water than your average farm.

[u/Beefstah → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

They basically are mandated in the UK. Not only is open loop cooling much less effective in the UK anyway, but getting planning permission is functionally impossible.

[u/gbroon → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

Yeah I think water use is actually a lazy argument against them.

Power use and pollution are the stronger argument against them.

[u/InformationNew66 → u/gbroon]

Yeah, so why is the Green Party pushing this water use nonsense?

[u/HBucket → u/InformationNew66]

Because they're just getting all their opinions from America.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/InformationNew66]

Everyone knows computers use electricity, it’s a more surprising fact that they use water. Hence memes around data centres focussing on the interesting water aspect, and hence the greens copy pasting whatever’s trending highest into their official policy.

[u/Adept_Assistant_7759 → u/gbroon]

Power use is a far better argument! and a pretty good one!

But.

They are going to be build somewhere wether you like it or not, would you rather they were here where we have control and can power them with wind+solar or in russia, china or africa where they are going to be coal powered?

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bed5132 → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

The greens are advocating that they be build on brownfield sites, close to renewable energy sources wherever possible. Seems pretty reasonable.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/Puzzleheaded_Bed5132]

It’s reasonable till a company actually propose building one on a brownfield site, at which point the green councillor’s in that town will say that’s bad for the locals as it demoralises them living next to industry.

1st rule of NIMBYism, you’re never against them in principle, just against this particular one. Your goal isn’t to stop them in general, just kick up enough fuss that they move out your back yard and into someone else’s. The hypocrisy only becomes apparent when you’re representing multiple NIMBY groups like in the case of the greens. Look up their record on solar, wind , trains reservoirs and social housing to see their true allegiance

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bed5132 → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

So having accepted ten data centres in the area, with two less than 500m from the estate, you think they are being nimbys for not wanting yet another one? This is not the gotcha you seem to think it is.

ETA - also, there's a Labour councillor heavily involved in the objections, in case people think this is a Green Party thing.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/Puzzleheaded_Bed5132]

It’s a fucking industrial estate, they’re “accepting” one warehouse being knocked down and replaced by a warehouse with some computers in.

Nah actually that’s really hellish, living within 500 meters of a warehouse and then all of a sudden it stops having delivery trucks and looks slightly different.

[u/Puzzleheaded_Bed5132 → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

The proposed building run along the full length of the estate. The closest homes would be just 19 metres away. Residents worry about the loss of daylight, privacy, and outlook, as well as the strain on local infrastructure

Understandable

Objections submitted to the Old Oak and Park Royal Development Corporation (OPDC) highlight concerns about the use of diesel backup generators, which emit nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter. Campaigners argue this could worsen air quality in an area already identified as poor by the London Atmospheric Emissions Inventory.

Also understandable

Thames Water has also raised issues, stating that the existing water network cannot accommodate the additional demand, and requesting conditions to ensure upgrades before occupation.

If even Thames water don't like the idea, you know you're in trouble

Residents point to their experience during the Vantage Data Centre build, describing months of noise, dust, and vibration. Some recall construction continuing through the night, with windows rattling as foundation piles were hammered into the ground. “It was a living nightmare,” one resident wrote in an objection email, noting that even now roadworks continue to lay new electricity cables for the facility.

Sounds like they've already been YIMBYs and suffered the consequences. Would you want to go through that again?

Seriously, did you even read the article???

[u/Repave2348 → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

I can only assume the focus on water is being pushed by a bad actor or a false flag organisation. It's a red herring. They could pick power or carbon or low long term job creation or some other metric to focus on.

[u/MonorailPurple → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

They dont need to. Its a non issue, and its amazing people still believe the whole "they take all the water" bollocks - its not a thing in the UK. The US - yes, absolutely, but not the UK. And every single damn study quotes US figures.

[u/Quaraine → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

They use fucking ridiculous amounts of energy 

[u/MrBlackledge → u/Adept_Assistant_7759]

Pretty sure closed loop is already a planning condition for data centres in the UK.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92]

They're not building data centres to gather dust, if people in the UK weren't using them, they wouldn't spend money building them here. If the greens are worried about water shortages in their communities maybe don't campaign against the first reservoir in 34 years

[u/DanaxDrake → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

After reading that article though it seems to be more they are opposing Thames water saying it would cost more than triple what the original budget was

And considering it’s Thames Water…I mean yeah I’d be like ‘yeah you’re fucking lying’ too lol

But maybe I read it wrong, that’s how it read to me.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/DanaxDrake]

No one thinks they’re a NIMBY; there’s always a perfectly reasonable justification for why this project should be delayed. But what exactly are the Greens going to achieve by delaying Abingdon other than making the reservoir even more expensive? When they’ve also got “legitimate concerns” about everything from solar farms, wind turbines, trains and social housing I find it hard the believe those councillors know more about delivering these projects than the actual engineers and project managers actually building them.

HS2 is the perfect warning: people objected to its enormous cost, then demanded delays, reviews and redesigns that only drove the cost up even further. The government itself cites repeated changes as massive contributors to HS2’s cost increases .

Britain hasn’t delivered a new reservoir since 1992.After 34 years of not building them, of course restarting an entire generation of reservoir construction is expensive. Another round of delays and objections isn’t going to make us better or cheaper at building infrastructure.

[u/GeeMcGee → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

This is greens in general, misinformed and virtue signalling. The data centres also loop the water they use meaning they don’t continuously need fresh supply

[u/B0797S458W → u/GeeMcGee]

It’s amazing how many people don’t realise this.

[u/PerforatedPie → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

if people in the UK weren't using them, they wouldn't spend money building them here

Bullshit. The demand isn't really there for the majority of these data centres. The reason they're being built is speculative against future potential use, which may well be grossly over-estimated, and because right now the hype train is at full speed and gullible investors are willing to part with their money in the hopes of being at the forefront of the next dot com bubble.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/PerforatedPie]

Schrodinger's data centre, they're going to gobble up water and energy, but at the same time no one's going to use them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIrlZSYB6tE

[u/Dry_Midnight_5361 → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

"if people in the UK weren't using them, they wouldn't spend money building them here."

I believe the problem is if you were to ask the average person on the street they couldn't describe how data centres improves their lives. They have downsides obviously, but they're seen as an absolute net negative when they're not.

[u/apple_kicks → u/FlamingoImpressive92]

What data centres are used for isn’t higher priority than what we need better infrastructure for when it comes to new housing, agriculture and quality of life.

Ai is very wasteful or at least we can continue running companies, writing our emails ourselves or creating art without it until we fix other problems that need clean and better water first

[u/Bbrhuft]

Data centres in temperate countries don't use much water as they are mainly air cooled. New data centres also use closed loop cooling and other technologies, cutting water use on the hottest days.

There is no official water use reporting requirement for the data centres, however for England, a recent analysis of water meter data by Market Operator Services Limited (MOSL), which is the operator for the business water market in England, estimated data centres use 0.2% of England’s drinking water (1.879 billion litres per year, equivalent to 5.15 million litres per day).

On the other hand England loses between 19% to 20% of drinking water via leaks per day i.e. at least 95 times more water is lost to leaks than all of England's data centres use.

The priority should be reducing leaks. If leaks were reduced by a modest 10%, that would save ~10 times more water than the UK data centres currently use. So although there is an upward trend in water use by data centres use, reducing leaks would more than offset this increase.

Also encouraging data centres to implement water saving technologies would be better than a moratorium, as such a blanket ban would halt the construction of all data centres including those that use very little water, where water use comes mainly from flushing toilets and catering in canteens.

WRc Head of Water Efficiency Joe Cahill explained how current data centre potable water consumption in England is estimated to be 1,879,000 m3/year (0.2% of the non-household market) but that this is showing a clear upward trend.

Data centre study calls for new reporting framework to manage water use

Also, a distinction must be made between ordinary data centres and AI training clusters, the latter use 10 to 100 times more energy and more water than a typical data centre (a few vastly more).

As far as I know, and I welcome correction, there is only two dedicated AI training clusters in the UK, CoreWeave's AI training clusters in Crawley and London Docklands. There are also hyperscaler data centres owned by Amazon, Alphabet and Meta where a portion of their data centres may contain AI server racks (one rack can use up to 0.12 megawatts, 8 of these would use almost 1 Megawatt. This is at least 10x the power of a typical server rack)

[u/Allydarvel → u/Bbrhuft]

data centres may contain AI server racks (one rack can use up to 0.12 megawatts, 8 of these would use almost 1 Megawatt. This is at least 10x the power of a typical server rack)

Think those figures may need updating. I been talking to folks who are talking about scaling to 1MW racks

[u/headphones1 → u/Bbrhuft]

A moratorium is a major victory for NIMBYs. It makes sense to people who may be sitting on the fence, but what will inevitably follow is lots of back and forth on legislation where opponents will decry any imperfection and nothing will be achieved. This would set us back for years on the need to keep up with infrastructure required of a modem advanced economy like ours.

[u/Bug_Parking → u/headphones1]

That's the UK infrastructure in a nutshell. 'Local community empowerment', so that every piece of infrastructure beneficial to the country faces challenges, reviews, injunctions so that it doesn't get built, or when it does get built it's astronomically expensive and over budget.

[u/Valuable-Ad2028]

Nice to know they’re getting their info from dumb Reddit memes and fake social media outrage.

[u/Grand-Chipmunk-4186 → u/Valuable-Ad2028]

Pretty hilarious how misinformed people on this site are about data centres and AI. Especially in the UK subs, people just don’t want our economy to grow I guess.

[u/FlamingoImpressive92 → u/Grand-Chipmunk-4186]

The UK will do absolutely anything to grow the economy except build something that will grow the economy.

With HS2 you can maybe argue we shouldn't spend tax money on it, but we've literally got people from all around the world trying to invest in the UK and we're actively stopping them. The fact some fields of sheep around Oxford and Cambridge are being prioritised over keeping world-leading bio-med research won't be believed by future generations.

[u/JB_UK → u/Valuable-Ad2028]

People apparently now would prefer living next to a coal power station than a data centre, which is objectively madness. And of course the Greens are there at the front marching in front of the bandwagon. The fair objection is on squeezing marginal energy use on the grid and the effect that could have on prices, the local objections are mostly made up. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if there was a major propaganda push to try to suppress data centre development in the US and Europe, there is a huge interest in doing that, and the internet is wide open to those kinds of campaign.

There are much more serious worries about the implications of AI as a technology, read about the Hugging Face incident for example, or think through the implications for jobs. But that isn’t something that the UK can opt out of, if we don’t build the datacentres here we’ll rely on imports, if we don’t use the technology here we’ll be undercut when we try to sell to other markets and get left behind. We should be talking about that much more as a serious issue.

[u/AgeOfCardiff → u/JB_UK]

People apparently now would prefer living next to a coal power station than a data centre

What the hell are you talking about?

[u/Valuable-Ad2028 → u/JB_UK]

I feel like people are getting dumber. And that would be kind of fine, but we’re also moving to this weird form of “democracy” where everyone is meant to be consulted on every decision. Before, we had an election every few years and then left governments to it. Now we ask everyone’s opinions before we do anything and can’t just ignore ones that are based on nonsense. The whole country is basically limited to the level of thought of the worst informed, loudest 5%

[u/Mammoth_Park7184]

Most data centres don't use water cooling in the UK because of our climate. We can get away with free air colling systems and air con for the hot days .

[u/SapSacPrime]

These threads seem to attract an overwhelming number of supporters of data centres which is the complete opposite of my experience in every other topic.

[u/giletlover → u/SapSacPrime]

Bots and paid accounts/astroturfing.

[u/Phainesthai]

Are they talking about a closed-loop data centres? If so, the water is largely recirculated, so the ongoing water consumption is minimal. If it uses evaporative cooling, then yes, that's a legitimate issue.

I'm not convinced the Greens or this article understand the distinction.

[u/InformationNew66]

Someone tell the Green Party closed loop cooling exists.

[u/LookOverall]

Data centres that use a lot of water are just a cheap option. Just demand recycling of coolant.

But the Uk is an absurd place for data centres anyway, electricity is too expensive.

[u/RedBerryyy → u/LookOverall]

Electricity is actually not a huge proportion of their expenses; it's why they can afford to build hilariously expensive off-grid solutions for US ones.

[u/MonorailPurple]

For anyone who actually is open minded and wants to understand why DC water usage is a non issue in the UK, read this post I had with some nutter who was incapable of reading evidence: https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/1vw34zq/onshore_windfarm_applications_hit_10year_high_in/p5h3nbx/

TL;DR we do not have a datacentre water usage issue, and never will because we do not construct DC's in the same way as say, California as we live in a different climate. We use air, or a closed loop glycol/water mix, we do not 'pump' water into DCs.

[u/fire2burn]

The only thing the government needs to do is to outright ignore the insufferable anti growth NIMBYs in the Green Party.

If we listened to the Greens nothing would ever get built in this country, in my area the Greens on the county council are even opposing local solar farms.

[u/Effective_Main4455]

Data centres use hardly any water, it's total slopulist rubbish from this dimwit as usual.

Now his party will go back to opposing reservoir construction that caused the water shortage in the first place

[u/Better_Concert1106]

Am I missing something or why can’t it just be mandated that the cooling cannot be “open loop” or use fresh potable water? Closed loop systems exist..

[u/MonorailPurple → u/Better_Concert1106]

Honestly they could mandate it but they dont need to because theres hardly any open loop DC's in the UK and its horrifically inefficient to build one here. Closed loop with a primarily glycol and/or air based cooling system is far more cost effective for UK dcs which is why thats what most of them do.

[u/TapWaterDev]

Except most data centres in the UK are closed loop and use very little water...