Contribution
The emerging nature of some of the technology involved here will enable even greater sharing of the heat and energy that comes from data centres. As I said, we are engaging with operators and will consider what further interventions may be necessary in future. At the moment, we are trying to encourage developers and operators to go down this route. The noble Baroness knows, because I have had the conversation with her, that I agree with her about the benefits that this could give to offset some of the feelings that people have about not wanting data centres near them. It is a key issue and we are working on it. It is important to continue to work on that programme as much as we can.
In relation to the strain on water supplies, data centres do not necessarily require large amounts of water. We have talked about how data centres can use water in a cyclical way. They use a variety of different cooling systems. Only a small percentage use entirely water-based ones and the technology develops. The older ones were heavier on water usage. Now, it is more common for that water to be used in a cyclical way. The Government are monitoring the areas that are subject to the greatest demand.
With critical national infrastructure, we will have greater engagement with the industry, which will help us better understand the potential alternatives. There are ways in which to minimise the impact on supplies and output of wastewater, and that is important to do. We encourage data centre developers to work with their water and wastewater supplier early in the planning process because that is key to understanding and planning their water usage. It is an important point that to some extent—this is an adjacent issue—the computing power of data centres will enable even further consideration of the use of water and energy. In other words, we hope that to some extent they will be able to solve their own problems through the strength of their computing power.
Both noble Lords raised the very important issue of local accountability. The NSIP consenting process provides substantial opportunity for interested parties, including local communities and local authorities, to have their say on proposals that go through that process. Under the Planning Act 2008, local authorities are invited to submit a local impact report giving the details of any likely impact of proposed development on their area, to which the Secretary of State must have regard to when deciding the application. The examination process, which all NSIP applications need to go through, provides opportunity for local communities, interested parties and statutory bodies to make representations and for those to be considered by the examining authority as it examines the application and the subsequent report. That report will then be made to the Secretary of State for a decision on whether to grant development consent.
I reassure the Committee that representations are thoroughly considered by the examining authority through that examination process, which can be up to six months in duration. It is then considered by the Secretary of State in deciding whether to grant consent in accordance with the legal and policy framework. Having seen these applications come through in the department, there is a great emphasis on comments and input provided by local authorities and local people.
The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, mentioned the issue of brownfield sites. The Government have been very clear that we have a brownfield sites first policy, and we are looking further at brownfield passporting, as he knows. However, as regards this critical national infrastructure, we cannot always avoid meeting the need for critical infrastructure where a brownfield site may not be available. So we want to make sure that we use the brownfield-first policy wherever possible, but where it is not possible, we still need the critical infrastructure.
The noble Lord, Lord Jamieson, also raised the issue of energy consumption. I have covered the grid issue, but the quantity of energy and water used by data centres depends on a number of variables around them. They are energy intensive, but data centre operators are taking a wide range of measures on sustainability. They are updating their hardware for more efficient systems and are working with their supply chains, and innovations such as taking the waste heat to use in local heat networks, which we have already been discussing, are becoming more common. So we encourage developers and operators to continue to improve that. Of course, there are very strong commercial incentives to do so, including the cost of energy and customer demand. As I said, I hope that with many of these issues around the use of energy and water we will be helped by the computing power of data centres themselves to resolve some of those issues. So I hope that will move us on a bit.