(1 day, 18 hours ago)
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Lord Randall of Uxbridge
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of new data centres on water resources.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, a recent report by the Water Research Centre concluded that existing data centres in England account for just 0.2% of current non-household demand. However, the Government recognise that the expected increase in data centre development could place additional demand on water supplies. Therefore, we are engaging closely with regulators and industry to help us better understand data centre water use and to explore ways to minimise this impact.
Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)
I thank the Minister. She will no doubt be aware that the majority of planned data centres are in areas of water stress or even severe stress. Currently, plans that are put forward do not have to say what the consumption of water will be. The Environment Agency wants more data in order to plan better. Does she not think it should be a matter for planning to know how much water will be consumed by any proposed data centre—because it is very variable—so that we can plan properly?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Proper information about the actual water use of data centres is clearly very important. We are taking action to support the data centre sector in England on this. Part of what we are doing is working across government to determine how we can increase water efficiency, to reduce the data centre water demand in the first place. We are also looking at not just the available evidence but the emerging evidence that is coming through on water use in data centres. One way to get that is to work with Ofwat’s Smart Water Metering Delivery Group, which will look at rolling out smart meters in the non-household market. That will help us better understand what the standards and delivery expectations are and how much water is being used. That work is due to be completed over the next 12 months.
Baroness Grender (LD)
Does the Minister accept that individual data centres can use as much water as thousands of homes yet it is still so ironic that these data centres do not appear able to provide transparent data about their own usage of water? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that new data centres put their own capabilities and machine-learning know-how to good use to tell us and provide us with that information?
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.
The Lord Bishop of Norwich
My Lords, can the Minister tell us what assessment Defra has made of the current regulatory framework and whether it will provide enough protection for the environment from the cumulative demand of data centres on water resources?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Clearly, the planning system is key to this. The very large data centres need to go through the NSIP—nationally significant infrastructure project—programme of planning, which also looks at full consultation. So there is a lot of interest; a lot of considerations are fully taken into account on the particularly large data centres. Clearly, like any major infrastructure, it will have an impact in a number of areas. We need to ensure that we get the balance right.
Lord Trees (CB)
My Lords, I am reliably informed that data can be sent through fibre-optic cables at the speed of light. Can the Minister tell us why we are putting, and planning to put, most of our data centres in the south and east of the United Kingdom when the vast majority of our water resources, and, indeed, most of our energy resources, are in the north and west of the United Kingdom?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I can certainly confirm that the north-west, where I live, has been particularly damp this year, unlike the rest of the country. I think that looks to the bigger question: how are we going to look at our water infrastructure over the coming decades? There are parts of the country, like where I live, that do not have water shortages, where there is still rain, and other parts where there is nothing. It is important that we consider as a country how best to use our water resources more broadly. Where do we need to build reservoirs? How do we support farmers in holding water, for example? The water usage question is a bigger part of that, as is the question of where we build our different infrastructure.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, our uniquely high electricity prices, created by ideological energy policies, already make the UK an uncompetitive location for data centres. Developers need to navigate a tangle of many of Defra’s 34 arm’s-length bodies—of which the Minister has mentioned two—planning authorities and water companies to create cost-effective solutions to cooling without endangering our scarce water resources. What is the Minister doing to reduce this complexity, in particular through the implementation of the Cunliffe commission report? I disclose an interest as an unpaid adviser to a data centre developer.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
More broadly, regarding the complexity and the number of different organisations, the Cunliffe report has made recommendations that Defra is not just looking at but working on, because we realise that we have to be more efficient and effective, as does the whole of government. As I mentioned, water-cooling systems use less electricity, so again we have this balance to make on those resources. We are looking at standards of efficiencies right across; specifically on water, there will be the opportunity to debate this more broadly when we get the water Bill in front of us.
Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)
We will hear from the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, next. He has been trying to get in.
Lord Wigley (PC)
If I understand correctly, the Government are looking at the possibility of recirculating some of the coolant water. If that is the case, is there a possibility of using it for district heating purposes? Can the Minister give an assurance that any heat dissipated will be allowed only if it does not adversely affect the biodiversity of that vicinity?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord makes some good points about that kind of system which would clearly need to be taken into consideration. At the moment, as far as I am aware, no final decision has been made around that, but we are working with the water companies and the data centres to look at how we can get the most effective use of systems, whether that is through air cooling or through water cooling, and if it is water cooling, whether we can use rainwater systems, for example, to increase efficiencies.
Baroness Teather (LD)
In May this House’s Environment and Climate Change Committee asked the Government to publish a prioritisation plan for emergency drought this autumn. The Government only partially accepted this, saying that any approach will be developed with critical national infrastructure sectors and not published in full. Can the Minister say when Parliament will be told how households, food production and data centres would be ranked if it came to it?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I am not able to give the noble Baroness that information today, but the department is taking the issue of drought very seriously, as it has done with floods previously. We need to understand what the impacts of both floods and drought are in this changing environment, and many of the issues she has talked about will be part of those discussions.