Tech companies should be required by law to report the energy and water consumption for their data centres, as the boom in AI risks causing irreparable damage to the environment, experts have said.
AI is growing at a rate unparalleled by other energy systems, bringing heightened environmental risk, a report by the National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) said.
The report calls for the UK government to make tech companies submit mandatory reports on their energy and water consumption and carbon emissions in order to set conditions in which data centres are designed to use fewer vital resources.
“In recent years advances in AI systems and services have largely been driven by a race for size and scale, demanding increasing amounts of computational power,” said Prof Tom Rodden, the pro-vice-chancellor of research and knowledge exchange at the University of Nottingham, who was a member of the NEPC working group that delivered the study.
“As a result, AI systems and services are growing at a rate unparalleled by other high-energy systems – and generally without much regard for resource efficiency. This is a dangerous trend, and we face a real risk that our development, deployment and use of AI could do irreparable damage to the environment.”
Google and Microsoft have reported year on year increases in data centre water consumption since 2020, and many of these water withdrawals come from potable water sources. In its annual environmental sustainability report in 2023, Microsoft said it consumed 6.4m cubic metres of water in 2022, primarily for its cloud data centres – a 34% increase on the year before.
Google said its data centres consumed 19.5m cubic metres of water in 2022, up 20%.
There is no reliable data on the quantity of resources used by data centres. In order to make effective policy to reduce their energy consumption, the government needed to collect information at scale, the report said.
Rodden said it was vital to monitor the environmental cost of AI. “Once we have access to trustworthy data pertaining to their environmental impacts, and a sense for where these services and systems are needed, we can begin to effectively target efficiency in development, deployment and use, and plan a sustainable AI future for the UK.”
The report made recommendations to policymakers including the need to:
Expand mandatory environmental reporting.
Provide information on environmental impacts of AI systems.
Set environmental sustainability requirements for data centres.
And reconsider data collection, transmission, storage and management practices.
Sarvapali (Gopal) Ramchurn, a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Southampton and the chief executive of Responsible AI UK who was also on the NEPC working group, said: “AI’s use has surged in the past two years, aiding daily tasks and boosting productivity and innovation. However, many are unaware of the significant costs and environmental impacts … AI providers must be transparent about these effects. If we cannot measure it, we cannot manage it, nor ensure benefits for all. This report’s recommendations will aid national discussions on the sustainability of AI systems and the trade-offs involved.”
