Speaking on a visit to the site of a proposed data centre in East London, Polanski told the : “We need to slam the brakes on these energy guzzling, water guzzling data centres.
“Essentially, we need basically a moratorium other than local scale data centres for the local community.
“At a time when three-quarters of the country are in drought, it is outrageous that these are being considered critical infrastructure.
“To most people critical infrastructure means hospitals, water, electricity. It doesn’t mean Artificial Intelligence.”
Data centres were classified as critical in 2024, meaning they get extra government support during incidents like cyber-attacks or extreme weather.
The Greens argue this means they could get priority over households for water. The government said data centres would not automatically get priority during shortages.
Mark Acton, executive director of the Data Centre Alliance, said data centres were not taking water from local communities and used less water than leisure centres and golf courses.
Speaking to the Today programme, he said getting planning permission was “very difficult” even in AI growth zones.
He added: “Data centres are not just AI, data centres run our lives… social media runs through data centres, our banking systems run through data centres.
“We depend on these things massively.”
The has discovered that ministers have not carried out an environmental assessment on the impact of their “Delivering AI growth zones strategy, external“.
A government official said it sees the paper as a statement of intent, rather than a formal policy moving towards implementation.
Data centres in the UK do not currently have to report the amount of water they use.