One of England's biggest flood defences gets £43m funding boost
More than £40m has been announced to protect thousands of homes and businesses in Somerset.Ministers confirmed the Bridgwater tidal barrier will benefit from £43m funding. The barrier, set to be completed in early 2027, will cost about £249m and this latest cash injection is part of that fee.Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Steve Reed said: "The storms this winter have devastated lives and livelihoods. The role of any government is to protect its citizens."
The funding is part of a £2.65bn announcement of investment in flood defences across the UK. Mr Reed added the government would continue to invest in building and maintaining flood defences.
The barrier in Bridgwater will be constructed across the River Parrett between Express Park and Chilton Trinity, and will have two vertical lift gates which can be closed to prevent water from flowing upstream during very high tides in the Bristol Channel.This, planners say, will help protect 11,300 homes in Bridgwater and neighbouring villages, as well as some 1,500 businesses, from flooding. The cost of the whole scheme, including the barrier, the operational site, downstream flood banks at Chilton Trinity, Pawlett and Combwich and 12 upstream sites with improved fish and eel passages, is £249m.
An extra £49m has also been announced in partnership funding.Alan Lovell, Environment Agency chair, said: "The impact of flooding on our communities will only become greater as climate change brings more extreme weather, like Storms Bert, Conall and Eowyn."With this new funding, we will work closely with the government to deliver the vital projects that are needed across the country, ensuring our investment goes to those communities who need it the most."
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
What would happen if Thames Water is temporarily renationalised?
When the environment secretary, Steve Reed, stood up in parliament last week, his message for the owners of the struggling Thames Water appeared clear: there would be no leniency on fines for breaching environmental standards – despite the requests of creditors who control the company. Amid the standoff, Reed said the government had 'stepped up our preparations' for the next stage: putting the company, a provider of water and sewage services to 16 million customers in London and south-east England, into temporary nationlisation, known as a special administration regime (SAR). Thames Water's perilous position stems from years of mismanagement, during which it built up unsustainable debts of about £20bn. Over the past year its problems have come to a head, with the company scrambling through a court battle in February to secure emergency funding, and now finding new owners. Things have not gone smoothly. The US investor KKR pulled out of its bid to buy Thames, leaving a group of about 100 creditors in line to take over the ownership. They include big institutional investors such as Aberdeen, BlackRock, Invesco and M&G, as well as US hedge funds such as Elliott Management and Silver Point Capital. So what would temporary nationalisation actually involve? Rather than selling off the business for parts, the special administrator's first priority is maintaining the essential water service. Similar regimes are in place for other crucial institutions such as energy companies, the Post Office and banks. The creditors would have a claim on proceeds of an eventual sale after that objective has been achieved. Senior class A bondholders would expect to receive some money back. The loans of class B creditors are likely to be worthless, and Thames's official owners last year acknowledged that their shares were worth nothing. No water company has gone through special administration. But the energy company Bulb was nationalised temporarily in 2022 after surging energy prices forced it into insolvency. That process ended up making the government money when energy prices returned to normal. Some of the most detailed cost estimates have come from consultants at Teneo hired by Thames Water. They said SAR would require as much as £4.1bn in funding from the UK government – seemingly a daunting addition to government debt. Yet the Teneo report and another prepared by consultants at Kroll make it clear they expect that burden to be temporary: even in the worst-case scenario, the government would eventually recover 100p in the pound. Dieter Helm, an Oxford University professor who has advised previous Labour and Conservative governments on energy and water policy, said: 'Whatever way it's done, it's pretty much inconceivable the government will not recover its costs.' Thames Water argued there would still be big extra costs of £51m a month as suppliers put pressure on and people leave the business – although many of these were forcefully disputed in court. Whatever the costs, they would be covered by the proceeds of an eventual sale out of SAR, with whatever is left shared out between the creditors. Such a sale does not seem impossible: the Hong Kong-based CK Infrastructure reportedly asked this month for its bid to be considered again. Helm has argued that the government should opt for SAR in order to prevent a free-for-all of special pleading from other water companies hoping to avoid fines. 'Every regulatory regime has to have a procedure for handling failure,' Helm said. 'Currently nobody knows what happens if you get into trouble. Nobody knows what happens if you play with the finances.' Charlie Maynard, the Liberal Democrat MP who intervened in the February court case and is appealing to the supreme court, wants Thames to be mutually owned by its customers after an SAR process to cut its debts. 'It's clear from Thames Water's own adviser that SAR will have a zero net cost so it is ridiculous that the government has not put the company into SAR already,' he said. 'SAR is the only way that the company will end up with a balance sheet strong enough to manage the material spending required over the next 10 or so years to get Thames Water's sewage system back in to shape and stop our rivers being filled with excrement.' One person with knowledge of the Bulb administration process said: 'Sorting out Thames Water in the public sector will be cheaper in the long run. The government definitely shouldn't be afraid.' Thames Water and the main creditors are strongly opposed to SAR. A Thames spokesperson said: 'An SAR doesn't fix Thames Water's problems. It will delay the delivery of improvement for our customers and the environment. It will be disruptive, add risk and uncertainty, increase costs, hinder our operational turnaround, destabilise our stakeholders and colleagues, and will not fix the balance sheet.' Creditors also have a lot to lose if forced to write off debts beyond the £6.7bn – or about 20p of every pound initially lent – they have offered to reduce Thames's financial burden. But under the worst-case scenario set out by Teneo, they could only receive 45p for every pound of debt. There are other arguments against SAR that the government may find compelling. One of the most notable is that Thames's operations are in need of a turnaround, so the prospect of the government owning every sewage overflow or flood may be unattractive. Trustees of the pension fund have also raised concerns. The Thames creditors also include some powerful investors who have told the government that imposing steep losses will make them much less willing to invest in Britain in the future. They argue that even if the government does not face any direct costs, the indirect cost will be much greater. On top of that, Thames and the creditors claim that any future owner will still require regulatory easements – leaving the government back where it started. A spokesperson for the creditors said Thames Water needed £5bn immediately and 'SAR is the wrong answer with a viable market solution on the table'. They added: 'Any exit from SAR will require regulatory support and SAR will only delay and increase the cost of the turnaround and leave customers and the taxpayer exposed to the continued risk of Thames Water's worsening environmental performance.' Thames Water has enough money to make it to next year at least, but eventually the creditors will have to either move forward with the takeover or pull out if they are not granted regulatory easements such as exemption from fines and prosecution during the turnaround. Some people expect litigation from creditors if it gets to SAR. However, the process gives the government, in tandem with the appointed special administrator, a lot of power, according to a senior restructuring lawyer close to the situation. 'It is very challenging for the creditors,' the lawyer said. The preferred option for the government is still a private-sector owner without government intervention. But if no deal can be reached, temporary nationalisation may be the only option left.
BBC News
16 hours ago
- BBC News
Rockcliffe gas plant firm to appeal planning rejection
The firm behind a proposed gas plant which was refused planning permission has said it is going to Regeneration had applied to build the plant at the North West Recycling site in Rockcliffe, near Carlisle, and it had been recommended that permission be granted, subject to concerns were raised at a recent special meeting of Cumberland Council's planning committee, and it was turned the time, the company did not comment, but it has now said that once it has received the planning decision notice in full it will lodge an appeal. The plant was intended to turn commercial and industrial waste such as film plastic and paper - which cannot be recycled - into a type of gas by heating would then be used to generate plans had sparked protests from nearby residents concerned about health and safety the meeting on 20 June, concerns were raised that the evidence of the long-term health implications was members of the planning committee voted to reject it, against two to accept. North-west Regeneration has now issued a statement, according to the Local Democracy Reporting pointed out that it had commissioned a number of reports by independent consultants, as well as a Environmental Health Department spokesman said: "These reports have been reviewed by the statutory consultees, including Cumberland Council Environmental Health, Cumbria Wildlife Trust, the Environment Agency, Natural England, and the Food Standards Agency."All these experts have considered the finest detail of the project and concluded that there is no detrimental impact on human health or the environment."The company is awaiting the planning decision notice in full and will then lodge an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate." Follow BBC Cumbria on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Times
3 days ago
- Times
Thirsty data centres are sucking up Britain's scarce water supplies
Britain's data centres are consuming close to ten billion litres of water a year at least as the country braces for widespread drought, The Times can reveal. Two regions are in drought, with more likely to follow, raising the possibility of summer hosepipe bans as rivers hit 'exceptionally' low levels, highlighting the squeeze on Britain's water supplies despite its rainy reputation. Yet there is no official estimate of how much water the nation's 450-plus data centres are using to keep their servers cool. The chairman of the Environment Agency (EA) has warned that England is heading for a national shortfall of five billion litres of water a day by 2055, more than a third of the 14 billion litres a day used now. But that is without factoring in the rapid rise of thirsty generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT. The British tech industry and the EA have been working in recent months to gauge water demand from data centres today and in years to come. Neither will publicly disclose a figure on data centres' water use. However, figures released under transparency laws suggest that water companies are already supplying at least almost ten billion litres a year to 231 data centres, the equivalent of 3,980 Olympic swimming pools. The snapshot, obtained by the technology campaign group, Foxglove, and The Times, suggests Thames Water is far and away the biggest supplier of water to data centres. About half of the UK's water companies were unable to provide figures to Foxglove, in part because data centres do not have to report their water usage. 'It is deeply alarming that over half our water companies have no clue how many data centres they supply, nor how much water they are hoovering up,' Donald Campbell, of Foxglove, said. This information void exists as the government eyes data centres as a totemic part of its economic growth plans. Labour has said AI will 'turbocharge' growth, with £39 billion committed for more data centres in the next five to ten years. Debate is also intensifying over the greater water demands of data centres running AI models. On June 10, Sam Altman, the OpenAI founder, mounted a defence of ChatGPT, saying an average user query required just one fifteenth of a teaspoon of water. So, what is the truth? Is the growth in data centres and AI a threat to Britain's water supplies, at a time when climate change is already increasing the risk of droughts? Most of the concern over data centres' environmental impact has focused on their energy use. Less understood is the impact of their water consumption. The Times's analysis has focused solely on water used directly for cooling the data centres themselves. While a small number are believed to use air cooling, most use water. The most water efficient are 'closed loop' systems, while the thirstiest are 'open loop' ones. The estimate of close to ten billion litres of water being used by about half of the UK's data centres is based on figures released under environmental information requests, The Times's conversations with individual water firms and, in the case of Thames Water, an unpublished report by the consultancy, Jacobs. The total is equivalent to the annual water use of 189,781 people, more than the population of Oxford. The tally is almost certainly a large underestimate. It covers only about half of the data centres and the figures for Thames Water are three years old. TechUK, the industry group, estimates there are 450 to 500 data centres in the UK. The group was unable to say what proportion uses each cooling technology. However, Luisa Cardani, TechUK's head of data centre programmes, said: 'Generally, you could argue that the newer data centres, especially when they are in water-constrained areas, will choose types of cooling like liquid cooling [closed loop] or direct to chip cooling [another approach] because it's more efficient.' Britain's data centres are mostly running servers powering websites, cloud storage and the latest hit series on Netflix. However, servers running AI models are much more water intensive. A study last year found ChatGPT uses four times as much water as previously thought. Some experts think the fears over water use are overwrought. Henry Shevlin, associate director at the University of Cambridge's Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, noted most things of economic value consume water, from agriculture to football matches, and data centres running AI models are neither an exception or an outlier. 'Is the juice worth the squeeze? To the extent that we do care about economic growth, we should be prioritising economic and resource-intensive activity in areas that are also going to give us big payoffs. Obviously AI has phenomenal potential here,' Shevlin said. Still, he said the tech industry should be more transparent about water use in Britain and the government could demand more openness. 'Revealing estimates of water usage and electricity usage are, let's be honest, they're not deep, sensitive corporate secrets,' he said. The result should be more water efficient data centres, Shevlin added. Anglian Water has even suggested data centres could be cooled with heavily treated effluent, known as recycled water, rather than water drawn from rivers and reservoirs. Growth in AI is 'likely to result in a large and rapid increase in the number of data centres in England', the Environment Agency said on June 17. The concern, it said, is many will be built by 2030, before new reservoirs and water transfers are complete. Britain's first new reservoir in more than three decades, Havant Thicket near Portsmouth, will not be full until 2031, for example. 'It is therefore critical that water availability is considered early in the planning stage [of data centres'], EA officials said. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, has recently overruled local councils to give the green light for building new data centres, once at Iver in Buckinghamshire last December and this May for one at Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire. Water industry sources believe new data centres in the next five years could need the same amount of water as 500,000 people. Thames Water said southeast England was already water-stressed and the region was earmarked for a large proportion of proposed new data centres. 'This brings a challenge between safeguarding our finite [water] resources while supporting the UK's growth strategy,' a Thames Water spokesman said. Water UK, the industry body, said: 'We need planning hurdles cleared so we can build reservoirs quickly'. An EA spokesman said: 'We are working with the technology sector to understand their needs, to help develop sustainable solutions.' Campbell said: 'Water companies and the government are walking into this future with a blindfold on. Ministers and water companies need to wake up — the likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google must not be given carte blanche to drain our rivers and streams.'
