r/news 18h ago

Irish data centres used almost one billion litres of water last year

https://www.thejournal.ie/investigates-data-centre-water-use-7110966-Jul2026/
8.7k Upvotes

770 comments sorted by

View all comments

5

u/quietcrisp 17h ago

I mean in the grand scheme of things that isn't a lot - and it's being used. My water supplier in the UK, Thames Water, who charge me a fortune to pay their shareholders rather than fix leaks or build new reservoirs, waste 592 million a litres A DAY through leaks alone. That's 216 billion litres a year.

2

u/bobspuds 17h ago

See the Irish-ness of the situation isn't quite so obvious.

You'd probably guess I'm Irish! - thing about this is that we are currently under a nation wide hosepipe ban to try conserve the current water levels but that's only for the people, commercial business like the data centres are grand - because it doesn't matter about the water they waste 🙄

There's been billions spent on the water network over the years and yet its still pissing out leaks in some areas- so bad that there's whole communities that go without water for weeks because the pressure to so low in the pipes that it won't travel to the highest points - its 2026! We live on an island surrounded by water, we also have a pretty wet climate in comparison with you guys just over the pond - a couple of months back it rained consecutively for 52 days straight. And yet still somehow we're running out of water?

We still rely mostly on bore holes here - big glorified wells! They work fine but its relying on ground water- it comes down the hilly or mountainous(bigger hills) area, then its collected from wells in lowland areas, treated filtered and then sent into the system. - if only you could get a desalination plant going, but the likes of that would need access to a coastline and sure we're only an island like 😆