Who Has the Right to Extract Our Public Water? Is Freshwater Guaranteed?

Who Is Allowed to Take the Water? 

Once we accept that freshwater abstraction can influence the condition of rivers and groundwater bodies, an obvious legal question follows:

Who is actually allowed to take the water?

In the European Union, water abstraction is not supposed to operate in a legal vacuum.

The EU Water Framework Directive requires Member States to control the abstraction of freshwater from both surface water and groundwater. Article 11 specifically requires registers of water abstractions and prior authorisation for abstraction, although Member States may exempt abstractions that have no significant impact on water status. These controls must also be periodically reviewed and, where necessary, updated.

In other words, there should already be a substantial administrative record of who is entitled to abstract water.

That is important.

Because the legal question is not whether governments can regulate abstraction.

They already do.

The more interesting question is whether the resulting system provides sufficient transparency to understand what is actually happening within an individual river basin.

A Permit Is Not an Unlimited Right to Water 

An abstraction permit should not be viewed simply as a permanent entitlement to a fixed quantity of water regardless of changing circumstances.

The Water Framework Directive connects water use to broader environmental objectives. Member States must promote efficient and sustainable water use and prevent abstraction from undermining the required status of European water bodies.

The European Commission has also emphasised that abstraction controls and permits should be periodically reviewed. In its 2025 assessment of implementation of EU environmental law, the Commission specifically called on numerous Member States — including Italy and the Netherlands — to ensure periodic reviews of permits for abstraction and other water uses.

This becomes particularly important during prolonged periods of low water availability.

A quantity that may have been sustainable when a permit was granted is not necessarily sustainable under fundamentally different hydrological conditions.

Scarcity Changes the Context 

The European Commission defines water scarcity as a situation in which demand frequently exceeds the sustainable supply capacity of the natural system within a river basin.

It also explicitly recognises that overexploitation of available water resources can exacerbate the consequences of drought.

That distinction deserves attention.

A drought may reduce the amount of water entering a system.

Human abstraction determines part of what subsequently leaves the available freshwater resource.

The two can occur simultaneously.

This means that exceptionally low river levels cannot automatically be attributed either to drought or to abstraction without examining the hydrological evidence.

But it also means that abstraction cannot simply be left out of the analysis.

From Registers to Real Transparency 

EU law requires registers.

But the existence of a register is not necessarily the same thing as meaningful public transparency.

For someone trying to understand the pressure on a particular river or groundwater body, the useful questions are far more specific:

Which abstraction permits are currently active?

Who holds them?

What quantities are authorised?

What quantities are actually being abstracted?

Are those figures measured in real time or reported retrospectively?

Are permits adjusted when river levels or groundwater levels become critically low?

And can the public access that information without navigating multiple authorities, databases and technical documents?

The Water Framework Directive requires River Basin Management Plans to include a summary of controls on abstraction and impoundment, including references to the relevant registers.

That provides an important framework for accountability.

But as water scarcity becomes more frequent, there is a reasonable case for asking whether a system designed more than two decades ago now provides the degree of granular, timely and accessible information required for modern water governance.

Transparency Before Restriction 

This becomes particularly important when scarcity forces governments to make choices.

Restrictions may eventually affect farmers, industrial operators, households, energy producers or other users. Governments may have to decide which uses of freshwater deserve priority and which must temporarily be reduced.

Such decisions can be necessary.

But their legitimacy depends on something more than legal authority.

They also require public confidence that the available resource is being allocated rationally, proportionately and transparently.

Before asking society to accept restrictions, governments should therefore be able to answer a remarkably straightforward question:

Who is taking water from the system, how much are they taking, and on what legal basis?

The infrastructure for answering that question largely already exists.

The next challenge is ensuring that the information becomes sufficiently accessible to make water allocation genuinely transparent.

Water Abstraction Is Not Water Consumption

Part 2.

Water Abstraction Is Not Water Consumption 

Any serious discussion about freshwater requires a distinction that is easily overlooked: water abstraction and water consumption are not the same thing.

Water abstraction measures the amount of water removed from a natural source — a river, lake, reservoir or groundwater body.

Water consumption asks a different question: how much of that abstracted water is not returned to the same water system in a form and timeframe in which it remains readily available?

The difference can be substantial.

A power station, for example, may abstract very large volumes of surface water for cooling and subsequently return much of it to the river. Agriculture may abstract a smaller volume, but a significant part can subsequently evaporate, transpire through crops or become incorporated into agricultural products.

Industrial processes, public water supply and data centres each have their own water profiles.

This makes headline figures surprisingly difficult to compare.

The Source Matters Too 

There is another distinction that deserves attention.

One cubic metre of water is not necessarily equivalent to another cubic metre of water.

Removing surface water from a large river during a period of high flow is hydrologically different from pumping groundwater from an aquifer that may take years or decades to replenish.

Timing matters.

Location matters.

The condition of the water body matters.

And the rate at which nature can replace the abstracted water matters.

This is particularly important for groundwater.

Aquifers function as natural reserves. They can sustain drinking-water supplies, agriculture, ecosystems and — through groundwater discharge — rivers themselves during dry periods.

Persistent over-abstraction can therefore create effects that are not immediately visible at the pumping site.

A falling groundwater table may affect springs, wetlands and river baseflow elsewhere in the system.

This Complicates the Legal Question 

A permit stating that an operator may abstract a certain quantity of water tells us something.

But it does not necessarily tell us enough.

To understand the actual pressure placed on a water system, we also need to know:

Where was the water taken from? How much was returned? Where was it returned? When was it abstracted? What was the condition of the water body at that moment? And how quickly can that source replenish itself?

This is why transparency cannot consist merely of publishing annual national totals.

Aggregated statistics are valuable for understanding trends. They are far less useful when trying to understand what is happening to a particular river, aquifer or region.

And that brings us to a more difficult question.

If a river reaches exceptionally low levels, can the public actually determine who is legally entitled to abstract water from that system — and how much is being taken?

That is where a hydrological question begins to become a legal transparency question.

Who Gets The Water

Freshwater abstraction, transparency and the emerging legal challenge of allocation Europe’s rivers are running low. Where is the water going? 

Something is happening to Europe’s rivers.

This summer, extraordinarily low water levels have become visible across the continent. The Rhine, Po, Loire and Danube  (Donau) - rivers that have shaped European landscapes, economies and communities for centuries - have all reached record low levels during August 2026.

For me, this is more than an abstract environmental statistic.

Living in northern Italy, I have watched rivers that I knew as substantial, fast-flowing bodies of water become dramatically diminished. Wide riverbeds that once carried powerful currents now contain comparatively narrow flows of water.

It raises an obvious question:

Where is the water going?

The conventional answer begins with drought: insufficient precipitation, reduced snowpack, extreme heat and increased evaporation.

All of those factors matter.

But drought and water scarcity are not synonymous.

The European Commission itself distinguishes between drought, caused by reduced precipitation, and water scarcity, which represents a more systemic imbalance between the water available and the demand placed upon it.

And that distinction changes the question.

Because Europe's freshwater is not merely affected by weather.

We abstract it.

From rivers.

From lakes and reservoirs.

And from groundwater beneath our feet.

The EU currently abstracts approximately 193 billion cubic metres of freshwater per year. Electricity generation and cooling account for approximately 33% of abstraction, agriculture for 31%, public water supply for 21% and manufacturing for 14%.

At the same time, groundwater abstraction for European agriculture increased by approximately 52% between 2000 and 2023.

Those figures do not prove that abstraction is responsible for the extraordinarily low rivers we are seeing today. Nor should water abstraction be confused with water consumption: substantial quantities of abstracted water are subsequently returned to the environment.

But the figures do establish something important.

Human decisions form part of Europe's water balance.

And that means that when rivers reach extraordinary lows, asking where the water goes is not speculation.

It is a legitimate question of resource governance.

The transparency problem 

This is where my concern increasingly lies.

Europe has sophisticated legislation governing water quality, ecological status, abstraction permits and groundwater protection. Member States collect substantial quantities of water data.

Yet for an ordinary citizen — or even a professional researcher — answering a seemingly straightforward question can be surprisingly difficult:

Who is abstracting freshwater, where, in what quantities, under which permits, and for what purpose?

The European Environment Agency publishes valuable aggregated figures. National and regional authorities maintain permits and registers. Individual industries publish varying amounts of environmental information.

But these pieces do not necessarily produce an easily accessible picture of who is taking what from a particular water system at a particular moment.

That matters.

Because water scarcity affected approximately 28% of EU territory and 32% of its population during at least one season in 2023. The European Environment Agency concludes that, despite a 14% reduction in total abstraction since 2000, there has been no corresponding overall reduction in the European area experiencing water scarcity.

Meanwhile, abstraction has increased since 2010 in agriculture, public water supply and manufacturing.

So perhaps the question we should be asking is not simply:

Why are our rivers running low?

But also:

What do we actually know about the water being removed from them — and from the groundwater systems that sustain them?

That is not an accusation.

It is a transparency question.

And as freshwater becomes a more contested resource, transparency over abstraction may become one of the most important prerequisites for legitimate water governance.

When Compliance Ends:

Civil Disobedience, Legitimacy and the Power of Community 

There comes a point at which awareness is no longer enough.

We can watch another video.

Share another post.

Discuss taxation, migration, food security, housing, digital control, public safety, declining public services or the increasing regulation of everyday life.

We can complain about governments.

And tomorrow, we can do it all over again.

But eventually we have to ask a different question:

What are we actually going to do?

For me, that question is becoming increasingly legal in nature.

Because beneath many apparently separate political debates lies a much more fundamental issue:

What happens when a substantial part of a population no longer believes that its government is acting in its interests?

Law and Legitimacy Are Not the Same Thing 

Lawyers are trained to distinguish what the law is from what we believe it ought to be.

A statute does not cease to exist merely because thousands — or even millions — of citizens disagree with it.

Taxes remain legally due.

Regulations remain applicable.

Government institutions retain their legal powers.

But there is another concept that matters just as much to a functioning society:

legitimacy.

Legal validity can be established by constitutions, statutes and institutions.

Legitimacy cannot simply be commanded.

A democratic State ultimately depends upon a sufficient number of people accepting that the institutions exercising power over them have a legitimate claim to do so.

And that creates an uncomfortable question.

What happens when that acceptance begins to disappear?

When the Social Contract No Longer Feels Reciprocal 

Taxation illustrates the problem particularly well.

Tax is not a contract.

I do not negotiate individually with the State about how much I will pay and precisely what I will receive in return.

The obligation arises from public law.

Yet politically, taxation has always depended upon an idea of reciprocity.

Citizens contribute to a collective system and expect that system to perform fundamental public functions in return.

Security.

Infrastructure.

Justice.

Education.

Healthcare.

Protection of borders.

A functioning society.

But what happens when citizens increasingly believe that this reciprocity has broken down?

What happens when people pay more and more, comply with more and more rules, and nevertheless believe that their government is failing in precisely those areas in which they expect protection?

The legal answer is simple:

dissatisfaction does not cancel the law.

The political answer is much more difficult.

Because a government can enforce a legal obligation.

It cannot indefinitely enforce belief in its own legitimacy.

From Compliance to Civil Disobedience 

This is where the concept of civil disobedience becomes relevant.

Civil disobedience is not the same as anarchy.

Nor does it necessarily mean violence.

In its classical form, it is precisely the opposite: an open, deliberate and principled refusal to comply with particular rules or policies in order to force society and government to confront their legitimacy.

That distinction matters.

There is an enormous difference between criminality for personal benefit and a large group of citizens publicly saying:

We no longer consent to the direction in which this system is taking us.

Those citizens do not magically place themselves outside the law.

They may face legal consequences.

But when non-compliance becomes sufficiently widespread, government faces a different problem.

It is no longer dealing merely with individual offenders.

It is dealing with a crisis of democratic legitimacy.

You can fine one person.

You can prosecute another.

You can issue administrative orders against thousands.

But what happens when hundreds of thousands — or millions — peacefully withdraw their cooperation?

At some point, enforcement itself becomes part of the political question.

The Boundary Must Be Non-Violence 

For any movement seeking greater self-determination, there must be a clear boundary:

violence cannot be the strategy.

Not because citizens should be passive.

But because violence destroys the very principle on which a legitimate alternative must be built: voluntary cooperation.

A movement based on self-determination cannot credibly demand freedom from coercion while using coercion against others.

That does not mean State power is unlimited.

Quite the contrary.

Government itself remains constrained by law in its use of force.

And if a democratic government ever reaches the point at which peaceful political dissent can only be controlled through increasingly coercive measures, another question becomes unavoidable:

Is the State preserving democratic legitimacy — or merely enforcing obedience?

That is a question every democracy should be willing to confront before it reaches that point.

Awareness Without Organisation Changes Nothing 

And this is where I think many contemporary movements fail.

Millions of people may share the same concerns.

They watch the same videos.

They recognise the same problems.

They become increasingly frustrated.

But they remain isolated individuals.

Awareness alone does not redistribute power.

Organisation does.

Ten people can talk.

One hundred people can organise.

One thousand people can build structures.

One hundred thousand people can create institutions.

A million people can become a political reality that no democratic government can responsibly ignore.

But a community requires more than anger.

It needs people with different skills and responsibilities.

Lawyers.

Farmers.

Engineers.

Teachers.

Entrepreneurs.

Doctors and healthcare professionals.

Economists.

Technologists.

Researchers.

Tradespeople.

Parents.

Young people.

People who know how to build, produce, organise, negotiate and care for others.

Not everybody has to do everything.

Everybody can do something.

Build, Rather Than Merely Resist 

This, to me, is where anti-compliance becomes constructive.

The ultimate objective cannot simply be:

we refuse.

It must eventually become:

we can do better.

If citizens want greater economic self-determination, build cooperatives.

If they want stronger local food security, create direct relationships between producers and communities.

If they want greater control over their economic relationships, explore lawful systems of mutual exchange.

If they distrust existing institutions, build transparent institutions of their own wherever the law permits it.

If they want political change, organise around precise demands rather than permanent outrage.

And where existing law leaves insufficient room for meaningful self-government, make changing that law the political objective.

Civil disobedience can expose a legitimacy problem.

But it cannot by itself build the society that comes afterwards.

Community can.

The Real Question Is Sovereignty 

Ultimately, this debate leads to a word that modern democracies are often uncomfortable discussing at the individual level:

sovereignty.

Not absolute personal sovereignty in the sense that every individual can declare themselves exempt from national law. That is not how the existing legal order works.

But something more practical:

How much authority over our own lives are we prepared to delegate to the State — and how much should remain with individuals, families and voluntary communities?

That question deserves to return to the centre of democratic debate.

Because self-government should not mean merely choosing, every few years, which political representatives will exercise power over us.

It should also mean retaining meaningful space in which citizens can organise their own lives.

Earn their own bread.

Enter into agreements.

Produce.

Exchange.

Build communities.

Care for one another.

And take responsibility for the consequences of their choices.

From Talkers to Walkers 

Perhaps that is the transition now required.

From awareness to action.

From isolated frustration to organised community.

From endless criticism of existing institutions to the construction of credible alternatives.

From talkers to walkers.

Civil disobedience should never become an excuse for chaos or violence.

But neither should compliance become the unquestioned measure of good citizenship.

A healthy democracy needs citizens who are prepared to question power.

A legitimate State should not fear those questions.

And when a significant part of society begins to withdraw its confidence, the answer cannot indefinitely be:

comply harder.

The answer must eventually be political, legal and structural.

Why have these citizens lost confidence?

What responsibilities do they want back?

What can be decentralised?

What can communities organise themselves?

And what would a legal framework for substantially greater self-determination actually look like?

Those are questions worth answering.

Because perhaps the most powerful form of peaceful resistance is not destroying the system you reject.

It is demonstrating that people are capable of building something better.

Compliance vs Zelfbeschikking.

Anti-Compliance: van contractsvrijheid naar zelfbeschikking 

Er was een tijd waarin economische samenwerking betrekkelijk eenvoudig kon worden voorgesteld.

Ik heb aardappelen. Jij kunt mijn dak repareren. We spreken af hoeveel aardappelen jouw arbeid waard is en wanneer jij mijn dak repareert.

Een overeenkomst.

Geen ingewikkeld systeem. Geen toestemming van een derde partij om met elkaar te mogen handelen. Twee mensen die ieder iets bezitten wat de ander nodig heeft en vrijwillig besluiten tot uitwisseling.

Onze moderne economie is vanzelfsprekend oneindig veel complexer geworden. Maar onder al die wetgeving, belastingen, registraties en administratieve systemen bestaat dat oorspronkelijke juridische beginsel nog steeds:

mensen mogen overeenkomsten met elkaar sluiten.

Contractsvrijheid behoort tot de fundamenten van het privaatrecht.

En precies daar begint voor mij de discussie over anti-compliance.

Van twee partijen naar drie 

Stel dat ik voor iemand een juridisch onderzoek verricht.

We komen vrijwillig overeen wat ik doe. We spreken een prijs af. Ik lever mijn onderzoek. Mijn opdrachtgever betaalt mij.

Privaatrechtelijk bestaat er in essentie een rechtsverhouding tussen twee partijen.

Maar economisch blijft het daar niet bij.

Zodra inkomen wordt gegenereerd, verschijnt de overheid in beeld. Er kunnen fiscale verplichtingen ontstaan, administratieve verplichtingen, registratieverplichtingen en — afhankelijk van de activiteit — vergunningen, sociale premies, btw-verplichtingen en andere voorschriften gelden.

Dat gebeurt niet omdat beide contractspartijen de overheid als derde partij tot hun overeenkomst hebben toegelaten.

Die bevoegdheid vloeit voort uit het publiekrecht.

En daarmee ontstaat een fascinerende juridische tegenstelling.

Hoe vrij is contractsvrijheid wanneer een aanzienlijk deel van de gevolgen van een overeenkomst door een derde wordt bepaald die geen partij bij die overeenkomst is?

Belasting is geen contract 

Belastingheffing wordt soms maatschappelijk voorgesteld als een soort uitwisseling: wij betalen belasting en daarvoor krijgen wij veiligheid, infrastructuur, gezondheidszorg, onderwijs, rechtspraak en andere publieke voorzieningen.

Juridisch is dat echter geen overeenkomst.

De burger sluit geen individueel contract met de staat waarin staat:

ik betaal bedrag X en in ruil daarvoor garandeert u mij prestatie Y.

Belastingheffing berust op wetgeving en overheidsgezag.

Dat onderscheid wordt interessant wanneer burgers het gevoel krijgen dat de wederkerigheid verdwijnt.

Wat gebeurt er wanneer iemand veel afdraagt maar zich niet beschermd voelt?

Wat wanneer iemand vindt dat essentiële publieke voorzieningen achteruitgaan?

Wat wanneer burgers de politieke keuzes die met hun belastinggeld worden gemaakt fundamenteel afwijzen?

Daaruit volgt onder het huidige recht niet het individuele recht om geen belasting meer te betalen.

Maar daarmee verdwijnt de legitimiteitsvraag niet.

Integendeel.

Contractsvrijheid en economische zelfbeschikking 

Misschien moeten we daarom opnieuw nadenken over een begrip dat in onze sterk gereguleerde economie steeds minder aandacht krijgt:

economische zelfbeschikking.

Waarom zou een mens niet in beginsel het recht hebben om met zijn eigen arbeid, kennis en bezit in zijn levensonderhoud te voorzien?

Waarom zou een groep mensen niet vrijwillig kunnen besluiten bepaalde goederen en diensten onderling uit te wisselen?

Een timmerman repareert een dak.

Een boer levert voedsel.

Een jurist schrijft een overeenkomst.

Een elektricien repareert de installatie van de jurist.

Een oudere bewoner past een middag op de kinderen van de boer.

We zijn dat tegenwoordig misschien ruilhandel gaan noemen.

Maar juridisch bezien gebeurt iets veel fundamentelers:

mensen organiseren vrijwillig hun onderlinge economische relaties.

Dat idee is niet revolutionair.

Het is ouder dan onze moderne staat.

Vrijwillige gemeenschappen 

En dan ontstaat een volgende vraag.

Waarom zouden mensen alleen afzonderlijk meer autonomie mogen verlangen?

Waarom zouden zij zich niet vrijwillig kunnen verenigen in gemeenschappen waarin zij zoveel mogelijk zelf organiseren?

Voedsel.

Energie.

Onderlinge dienstverlening.

Zorg voor elkaar.

Geschillenbeslechting.

Gemeenschappelijke voorzieningen.

En eigen afspraken over de manier waarop leden aan die gemeenschap bijdragen.

Niet omdat ieder mens dezelfde overtuigingen heeft, maar juist omdat mensen vrijwillig kiezen voor de gemeenschap waarvan zij onderdeel willen zijn.

Dat is een andere gedachte dan wetteloosheid.

Het betekent niet:

geen regels.

Het betekent:

regels waaraan wij zelf hebben meegewerkt en waarmee wij vrijwillig hebben ingestemd.

Het juridische probleem 

Hier botst het ideaal op de bestaande rechtsorde.

Een groep mensen kan een vereniging, coöperatie, onderneming, woongemeenschap of andere private structuur oprichten. Zij kunnen onderling contracten sluiten en voor een groot deel bepalen hoe zij samenwerken.

Maar zij kunnen niet door onderlinge overeenstemming besluiten dat het nationale recht voortaan niet meer op hen van toepassing is.

Een stuk grond in Nederland blijft Nederlands grondgebied.

Een gemeenschap in Italië blijft onderworpen aan Italiaans en Europees recht.

Een privaat contract kan de belastingwet niet simpelweg buiten werking stellen.

Wie serieus over zelfbeschikking wil nadenken, moet dat juridische obstakel erkennen.

Maar vervolgens mag de volgende vraag worden gesteld:

moet dat altijd zo blijven?

Een experimenteerruimte voor zelfbestuur 

We kennen economische zones waarin afwijkende regels gelden.

We kennen autonome gebieden.

We kennen coöperaties, communes, collectieve woonvormen en andere vormen van gemeenschappelijk bezit en bestuur.

Waarom zou binnen een moderne democratische staat niet verder kunnen worden geëxperimenteerd met gebieden waarin burgers bewust voor een grotere mate van economische en bestuurlijke zelfbeschikking kiezen?

Niet buiten iedere rechtsorde.

Niet zonder bescherming tegen geweld, uitbuiting of misbruik.

Maar wel met aanzienlijk meer ruimte om zelf te bepalen hoe men woont, werkt, produceert, ruilt en voor elkaar zorgt.

Zo'n gemeenschap zou juist contractueel kunnen worden georganiseerd.

Wie toetreedt, weet welke basisregels gelden.

Wie niet wil toetreden, hoeft dat niet te doen.

Wie wil vertrekken, moet kunnen vertrekken.

De legitimiteit ontstaat daarmee veel directer uit instemming dan binnen een systeem waarin iemand door geboorte en woonplaats automatisch onder duizenden regels valt waaraan hij individueel nooit toestemming heeft gegeven.

Anti-compliance is dan geen anarchie 

Dat is wat anti-compliance voor mij interessant maakt.

Niet het afschaffen van afspraken.

Niet het recht van de sterkste.

Niet simpelweg weigeren belasting te betalen terwijl de huidige belastingwetgeving van toepassing blijft.

Maar het opnieuw durven stellen van een veel fundamentelere vraag:

hoeveel zeggenschap heeft een mens eigenlijk nog over zijn eigen economische bestaan?

We spreken voortdurend over vrijheid.

Maar iemand die werkt, onderneemt, woont, produceert, verhuurt, koopt of verkoopt bevindt zich inmiddels in een buitengewoon omvangrijk stelsel van publieke en private voorschriften.

Misschien moeten we daarom niet alleen discussiëren over nóg betere regels.

Misschien moeten we ook durven vragen hoeveel regels werkelijk noodzakelijk zijn.

En hoeveel ruimte een mens zou moeten hebben om samen met anderen een ander model te kiezen.

Het recht om je eigen brood te verdienen 

Daar begint het voor mij.

Bij iets buitengewoon eenvoudigs.

Een mens beschikt over tijd, kennis, arbeid, creativiteit en misschien een stukje grond.

Een ander mens heeft daar behoefte aan.

Zij komen vrijwillig tot overeenstemming.

Jij doet dit voor mij. Ik geef jou daarvoor dat.

Dat is contract.

Dat is samenwerking.

Dat is wederkerigheid.

En misschien moeten we opnieuw onderzoeken hoeveel ruimte onze rechtsorde bereid is te geven aan mensen die hun samenleving op die eenvoudige gedachte willen bouwen.

Niet omdat zij tegen recht zijn.

Maar omdat zij opnieuw zeggenschap willen over de regels waaronder zij leven.

Anti-compliance hoeft niet te betekenen: geen samenleving.

Het kan ook betekenen:

wij willen opnieuw kunnen kiezen hoe onze samenleving eruitziet.

Datacenters and their effects on our environment

What Are Data Centres?

Data centres have become one of the most important pieces of infrastructure of the digital economy.

They power cloud computing, financial transactions, streaming services, social media, scientific research, government systems and, increasingly, artificial intelligence.

Yet despite their importance, remarkably few people know what actually happens inside a data centre — or what physical resources are required to keep our apparently virtual world running.

The word cloud does not help.

The cloud is not somewhere in the air. It consists of physical buildings filled with servers, processors, storage systems, networking equipment and cooling infrastructure.

And all of this requires electricity, produces heat and, depending on the cooling technology and electricity supply, may require substantial amounts of water.

What does a data centre actually do?

At its simplest, a data centre performs three fundamental functions:

it stores data, processes data and transfers data.

When we send an email, make an online payment, stream a film, upload photographs, access business software or use an AI application, computers somewhere have to perform the work.

Those computers are servers.

Large data centres can contain tens of thousands of them, operating continuously and connected through extremely fast networks.

The information stored and processed can include corporate records, financial transactions, scientific datasets, government information, websites, videos, photographs, medical information, communications and personal data.

So yes, our personal information forms part of this enormous digital ecosystem.

But it would be incorrect to describe data centres simply as facilities designed to store personal information or control citizens. They perform an enormous range of legitimate and increasingly essential functions.

There is, however, a legitimate question about the concentration of this infrastructure:

Who controls the infrastructure on which an increasing part of society — and its data — depends?

Then came artificial intelligence

Artificial intelligence is changing the scale of the discussion.

Modern AI systems require enormous computational capacity.

Training large models involves vast numbers of mathematical operations performed by specialised processors, while running those models for millions of users requires continuing computational capacity.

This creates a physical chain that is easy to overlook:

AI → computation → electricity → heat → cooling.

And, in some cooling systems:

AI → computation → electricity → heat → cooling → water consumption.

AI may appear entirely digital on our screens, but its environmental footprint is unmistakably physical.

Where does all that electricity go?

This is one of the most interesting aspects of the discussion.

A server uses electricity to perform calculations, move information and operate electronic components. Ultimately, almost all of that electrical energy becomes heat.

That heat cannot simply remain inside the building. Servers operate within defined temperature ranges and must therefore be cooled continuously.

The heat has to go somewhere.

Cooling systems transfer it away from the processors and ultimately release it into the surrounding environment, unless some of the waste heat is captured and reused — for example, in district heating systems.

This does not mean that data centres are the principal cause of global warming, nor that the heat released by them explains extreme temperatures such as a 45°C summer day.

That would overstate the evidence.

Their contribution to global warming primarily depends on the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with the electricity they consume. Their direct waste heat can be relevant locally, particularly where large concentrations of computing infrastructure exist, but it is not the main driver of global climate change.

Nevertheless, the sheer quantity of energy involved makes the heat question worthy of far more public attention.

How much electricity are we talking about?

The European Commission's Joint Research Centre estimated electricity consumption by EU data centres at approximately 45–65 TWh in 2022.

One terawatt-hour equals one billion kilowatt-hours.

That means roughly:

45–65 billion kWh of electricity in a single year.

And demand is expected to increase as cloud computing expands and AI becomes embedded in more services.

This is therefore no longer merely an IT question.

It is an energy-infrastructure question.

Why do data centres need water?

Not every data centre uses water in the same way.

Some facilities rely largely on dry cooling or closed-loop systems. Others use evaporative cooling, in which water absorbs heat and is subsequently evaporated.

That distinction matters.

Water that evaporates has not merely been withdrawn temporarily.

 From the perspective of the local water system, it has been consumed and is no longer immediately available for another local use.

There is also an indirect water footprint.

Electricity generation itself can require water. Thermal power stations — including nuclear and certain fossil-fuel plants — may use substantial quantities of water for cooling.

Consequently, looking only at the water meter at the entrance of a data centre does not necessarily reveal its complete relationship with water.

How much freshwater do European data centres consume?

This is where the picture becomes surprisingly unclear.

There is no single, comprehensive and easily accessible public European database showing, for every major data centre:

how much freshwater it withdraws, how much it actually consumes, where that water comes from and which cooling technology is being used.

European reporting requirements for larger data centres are becoming more extensive, which should improve the available information.

But public transparency remains incomplete.

That becomes increasingly difficult to justify when freshwater itself is under pressure.

A digital economy in a water-stressed Europe

Across Europe, drought, low river flows and pressure on groundwater resources are becoming increasingly important policy issues.

The Netherlands — a country internationally famous for water management — has a formal system for prioritising water use during serious shortages: the verdringingsreeks, or water allocation hierarchy.

That fact changes the context in which we should discuss data centres.

If governments are preparing to decide which societal functions receive priority when freshwater becomes scarce, it is reasonable to ask how large industrial water users fit into that equation.

And it leads to a question that reaches well beyond data centres:

What do we want to use our available freshwater for?

Drinking water?

Nature?

Agriculture?

Industry?

Energy production?

Digital infrastructure?

Artificial intelligence?

These are not anti-technology questions.

They are questions about the allocation of finite physical resources.

The issue is not whether we need data centres

We do.

Hospitals, banks, governments, universities, businesses, communications networks and countless other essential services depend on digital infrastructure.

A modern society without data centres is scarcely imaginable.

The more relevant question is therefore:

Under what conditions should we build and operate them?

If cooling technologies are available that dramatically reduce freshwater consumption, should new water-intensive facilities still be permitted in regions already experiencing water stress?

If a facility consumes enormous amounts of electricity, should its waste heat be discarded, or should heat recovery become an integral part of planning?

And if governments expect citizens, farmers and businesses to accept restrictions during periods of water scarcity, shouldn't major industrial water consumption be fully transparent?

The cloud has a physical footprint

Perhaps that is the most important point.

For years, digitalisation has been presented in language that makes it sound almost weightless.

Cloud.

Virtual.

Digital.

Artificial intelligence.

But underneath those words lies an immense physical infrastructure.

It occupies land.

It requires metals, concrete and sophisticated electronics.

It consumes electricity.

It generates heat.

It requires cooling.

And some of it consumes freshwater.

As AI rapidly increases the amount of computation performed around the world, we should stop treating digital infrastructure as though it exists outside the physical environment.

It does not.

The digital world is physical.

And before Europe expands that infrastructure further, we need much greater transparency about its real resource footprint — not because technological progress should stop, but because responsible technological progress begins with understanding what it actually costs.

Fresh-water Footprint Datacenters and international & domestic transparency

 Europe is drying out. But do we actually know who is using our freshwater?

The Netherlands gets plenty of rain.

And yet, the Rhine at Lobith has reached exceptionally low discharge levels. Across Europe, rivers, groundwater reserves and freshwater systems are increasingly under pressure.

At the same time, Europe is rapidly expanding another type of infrastructure: data centres.

For JAS Sustainable Advice, I investigated a simple question:

How much European freshwater is actually being used to keep our digital infrastructure running — and cool?

The answer is surprisingly difficult to establish.

EU data centres were estimated to consume 45–65 TWh of electricity in 2022.

That is 45–65 billion kWh in one year, or an estimated 1.8–2.6% of total EU electricity consumption.

And electricity is only part of the story.

Data centres can use freshwater directly for cooling. How much depends enormously on the technology. Closed-loop and dry-cooling systems can dramatically reduce water consumption, while evaporative cooling can consume substantial quantities of water.

There is also a less visible water footprint: electricity generation itself.

Nuclear, coal and some gas-fired power plants require water for cooling. Wind and solar PV require virtually no cooling water during electricity generation.

So the freshwater footprint of a data centre depends not only on how it is cooled, but also on how its electricity is actually generated.

And then there is the transparency problem.

We still do not have a complete public figure for the freshwater consumption of Europe's data-centre industry. EU reporting requirements have improved the situation, but facility-level information remains incomplete or unavailable.

There is no evidence that data centres are causing Europe's current low river levels.

But Europe is building a rapidly expanding, permanently operating digital infrastructure — accelerated by AI — while freshwater is becoming increasingly stressed.

That raises a question:

If technology already exists to operate data centres with dramatically less freshwater, should water-intensive cooling still be permitted in water-stressed regions?

I have published the full analysis, figures and sources on JAS Sustainable Advice.