Data Centres: Water Resources
Baroness Teather Excerpts(1 day, 15 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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.