As AI guzzles water and energy, we are already facing a choice: datacentres or homes? | John Harris
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- Slough Trading Estate hosts as many as 40 datacentres — the densest cluster in western Europe — owned by Equinix, Digital Realty and Iron Mountain, serving Amazon, Google, Oracle and Microsoft, with more planned.
- A Cambridge University preprint suggests datacentres create a "heat island" effect raising local temperatures by an average of 2C and up to 9C; the estate's owners told Harris they had seen "no conclusive evidence" of local temperature increases.
- Water UK said government water forecasts are "fatally flawed" and "explicitly exclude" datacentres, which can use up to 5 million gallons of water a day — equivalent to the consumption of up to 50,000 people.
- Whitehall's official aim is to triple the UK's datacentre count by 2030, and datacentres are now classed as critical national infrastructure, with Ofgem saying 100 planned UK centres aim to install their own dedicated gas turbines.
- A London Assembly report in December found datacentre electricity demand has stalled housebuilding in the capital; last week housing secretary Angela Rayner approved a Truman Brewery redevelopment delivering a datacentre and 44 homes against the local council's plan for 350 dwellings.
- New York became the first US state to impose a one-year pause on new "hyperscale" datacentres, while Texas's Republican governor banned new centres in rural areas and ordered they cannot join the state power grid until their water and energy use is reviewed.
- Local resident Sheryl in nearby Britwell told Harris the area has grown hotter and noisier as datacentres expanded, while Thames Water staff working in offices across the street from an Equinix site did not initially know what the building contained.
- Donald Trump has publicly backed datacentre expansion, telling communities they must "convince" themselves, as the issue becomes central to US midterm election discourse.
Why it matters: With the UK officially targeting a tripling of datacentres by 2030 and Water UK warning that government forecasts exclude their 5-million-gallon daily water use, ministers face a concrete trade-off already visible in east London — where Angela Rayner approved 44 homes at the Truman Brewery site against the local council's plan for 350.
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