- Environmental officials urge UK citizens to delete emails and photos to save water resources
- Data centres use vast water volumes for cooling, contributing to drought pressure
- Drought declared in multiple UK regions with reservoirs at 67.7% capacity, below normal
Amid the ongoing drought crisis in the UK, environmental officials have urged millions of citizens to delete emails in their inboxes and unused photos to conserve water resources. The National Drought Group made the recommendations for the public, as "data centres require vast amounts of water to cool their systems".
"The current situation is nationally significant, and we are calling on everyone to play their part and help reduce the pressure on our water environment," said Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency Director of Water, in the press release.
"Simple, everyday choices, such as turning off a tap or deleting old emails, also really helps the collective effort to reduce demand and help preserve the health of our rivers and wildlife."
Formal drought declarations have been made in Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Merseyside and Cheshire, the East Midlands and the West Midlands. The reservoirs have averaged 67.7 per cent full, down from the usual 80.5 per cent at this time of the year.
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Data centres require vast amounts of water and energy to cool servers which run constantly around the year and process global internet traffic, including emails. According to a report in The Verge, a small data centre is believed to use upwards of 25 million litres of water per year if it relies on old-school cooling methods that allow water to evaporate.
Notably, in 2021, Google's data centre in The Dalles, Oregon, used 355 million gallons of water, which could be used to fill approximately 538 Olympic-size swimming pools.
Apart from using excess water to keep data centres operating, generating electricity for them is another energy-heavy exercise. Since fossil fuel power plants and nuclear reactors also need water for cooling and to turn turbines using steam, the water use is exponentially increased, causing damage to the environment.
With the advancements in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector, the use of water to cool down humongous data centres is set to rise.
Apart from urging citizens to delete emails, the agency has suggested collecting rainwater, fixing leaking toilets, using water from the kitchen to water plants and reducing shower durations to save water.
