Water, energy and land expenditure for AI data centres has grown exponentially in the past 5 years. Government should make commitments now to protect public access to energy and water, set absolute caps on how much data centres can use, and ensure increased costs are never burdened on the public.

Data centres are not going away, and the growth of their use worldwide has already placed a burden on water and energy infrastructure. These businesses should never be given freedom to expand data centres where that expansion reduces the availability or quality of energy and water supply to the general public, and it should be codified in law that all increased costs associated with greater strain on infrastructure should be burdened by the companies causing that strain.