![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/00034865-1038x756.jpg\")
\n Illustration by Roy Scott \/ Ikon Images<\/p>\n
\n Illustration by Roy Scott \/ Ikon Images<\/p>\n
The Isle of Dogs occupies a southward kink in the River Thames, the tear drop of the East End. It twinkles with the steel and glass of Canary Wharf\u2019s office skyscrapers and high-rise flats reflected in its docks. I recently wandered around what\u2019s known as the Digital Docklands, an estate of data centres overlooking Millwall Dock.<\/p>\n
The water that once powered a third of London<\/a>\u2019s grain imports from ships arriving here from Europe, Australia and New Zealand is being put to new use \u2013 piped around racks and racks of servers to keep them cool. In 1858, Isambard Kingdom Brunel\u2019s steamship the SS Great Eastern, the biggest ship ever built at the time, launched here. Today, the big industrialist in town is a San Francisco-based property giant called Digital Realty, which owns the 119,000-square-foot site.<\/p>\n Cast-iron disused cranes stretch skywards over the dock \u2013 silent beneath the thick hum of the data centre. It is a fortress of cladding and faux-wharf redbrick, and its windows reveal tubes pumping dock water around tight rows of oblongs. If data exists in the cloud, then this is its body and blood.<\/p>\n There are at least 20 data centres \u2013 which house computing systems that store and process data \u2013 in the Isle of Dogs and South Poplar area, one of the highest concentrations in Britain. They are a \u201csevere\u201d risk to housebuilding for the next decade, according to Tower Hamlets Council housing department documents uncovered by the online magazine, London Spy: \u201cHousebuilding, at scale, is unable to proceed for potentially ten [or more] years due to lack of available electricity capacity\u201d because of a \u201csudden increase in connection applications from data centres\u201d. (A Tower Hamlets Council spokesperson told me they were \u201cnot aware\u201d of this, but acknowledged the need for more electricity capacity in the \u201cnext decade\u201d and Thames Water improvements for \u201cfuture growth\u201d.)<\/p>\n Data centres use a vast amount of water and electricity. Just saying \u201cthank you\u201d to ChatGPT<\/a> four times in an exchange with the AI chatbot uses up the equivalent of a glass of water. In fact, one data centre can use as much energy as thousands of homes. Helen Wakeham, the Environment Agency\u2019s director of water, entreated the public over the summer to start \u201cdeleting old emails\u201d in order to save water. \u201cWhen we think of using Netflix, Zooming, posting things on TikTok, we think, \u2018It\u2019s digital, it doesn\u2019t have a footprint, it\u2019s on the cloud,\u2019 but it actually has a very physical presence,\u201d said Felicia Liu, an expert on the material impact of data centres, at the University of York.<\/p>\n In the Docklands area, data centres use up to 75 per cent of the electricity, compared with just 6 per cent used by houses. The Isle of Dogs is a deprived place, where Sixties council flats crumble beneath the Gotham City of finance above them. There is an acute need for more houses here, but data centres are booming because of demand for storage and internet speed from Canary Wharf.<\/p>\n Housing is under threat elsewhere, too. Three west London boroughs \u2013 Hillingdon, Ealing and Hounslow \u2013 faced a de facto ban on new homes in 2022 because of data centres straining the local electricity grid. Housing delays in Slough have also been blamed on data centres: the Berkshire town is home to Europe\u2019s largest hub of them. A recent major review into Britain\u2019s water industry hinted at this competition for resources, highlighting the need for infrastructure to serve \u201ccritical areas such as housing and data centres\u201d.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/dl6pgk4f88hky.cloudfront.net\/2021\/09\/TNS_master_logo.svg\"){kind=logo}
<\/a><\/p>\n