England Industry Uses 2.6bn Litres Daily, Data Lacking — SkimNews
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- England's businesses use 2.6bn litres of public water daily — about 30% of public supply, with two-thirds in water-stressed areas — while one in 10 are not metered and only 11% of metered firms have smart meters, per market operator Mosl.
- ExxonMobil's Fawley refinery in Southampton tops Mosl's supply-point map and was cited to a House of Lords committee as an example of "high volume of water wastage in industry that is not disincentivised by government or the regulatory framework"; ExxonMobil disputed the figures as commercially confidential, saying the "vast majority" of water comes from the Solent strait for cooling and potable water accounts for under 1% of consumption.
- Mosl must negotiate bespoke data-sharing agreements even with Defra and the Environment Agency, chief executive Sarah McMath told the Lords committee, because commercial confidentiality rules block routine disclosure.
- Water UK argues official forecasts assuming business consumption will fall 9% by 2038 and 15% by 2050 are unrealistic, citing demand growth from datacentres — one operator told Mosl a single UK site uses 219m litres a year — hydrogen production and housing.
- Anyone in England can take up to 20,000 litres a day from a stream, borehole or spring without a licence, an exemption covering an estimated 850,000 people and organisations, mostly on farms and in rural areas.
- England's water companies are losing about 2.2bn litres of water a day through leaking pipes, as three-quarters of the country remains in drought.
Why it matters: England's drought response is being built on data regulators themselves call incomplete: 10% of businesses are unmetered, commercial confidentiality blocks even Defra from accessing Mosl's figures, and a 20,000-litre-per-day unlicensed abstraction loophole covers 850,000 sites — meaning national water planning is flying blind while firms like ExxonMobil's Fawley consume at scale.
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