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For more than a decade, sustainability discussions in the datacentre sector have centred around energy efficiency. Metrics like PUE became industry shorthand for environmental responsibility. Yet as demand for compute grows, another resource is becoming a critical operational and reputational issue. Water.
The Salute State of the Industry 2025 report shows that 83% of operators believe their water management practices are effective. However, rising cooling density, the growth of liquid cooling, and increasingly strict regulation mean many facilities will soon need to prove this confidence.
Water stewardship is moving from a background operational task to a core measure of datacentre maturity. It is also becoming an important differentiator for organisations that need to demonstrate environmental responsibility in more than one dimension.
The Isle of Man Datacentre is engineered for resilience first, and its traditional, stable cooling environment gives customers a dependable foundation without the uncertainty that surrounds rapid high density cooling transitions.
Why Water Is Entering the Spotlight in 2026
The report signals an industry that is entering a new phase of cooling complexity. As workloads become more power dense, cooling systems must carry much greater thermal loads. This naturally increases reliance on water as a core component of thermal management.
The challenge is that most datacentre customers never see the detail. Water flows, temperature variances, treatment chemistry, evaporative cycles, and monitoring processes are rarely visible to them. Yet these factors significantly affect stability and sustainability.
High confidence is understandable. Many operators believe their existing processes are robust. But confidence can mask risk if facilities have not aligned their controls with rising cooling demands.
This is why regulators are beginning to scrutinise water data in the same way they previously examined energy reporting.
Rising Density Creates Rising Pressure
Salute cites external data showing that direct liquid cooling and related upgrades have grown by 18% year on year. Liquid cooling is efficient and vital for extreme densities. It is also complex. It introduces new failure modes, new dependencies, and new risks that traditional evaporative systems did not need to consider.
These risks include:
• Increased sensitivity to water purity
• Higher chemical treatment requirements
• Greater potential for contamination
• More reliance on automated valves and sensors
• Additional leak paths
• Higher monitoring overheads for facilities teams
It is not yet clear whether all operators are ready for this level of complexity. Many will need to strengthen their environmental controls to maintain operational resilience.
Traditional environments that handle predictable 4kW to 8kW loads may therefore offer a more stable and lower risk cooling profile, especially for enterprise workloads that do not require extreme density.
Confidence in Water Management Is High, But It Will Be Tested
The State of the Industry data shows strong confidence in water management.
• 37% believe they are highly effective
• 46% believe they are somewhat effective
• Only 2% consider their approach ineffective
Yet the report also notes that regulatory pressure is increasing. What is considered transparent and responsible today may not satisfy standards being drafted for 2026 and beyond.
This includes potential requirements to report:
• Water usage by cooling category
• WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness)
• Leak detection statistics
• Treatment and filtration regimes
• Compliance with local water discharge standards
• Real time monitoring capabilities
• Environmental risk assessments
Organisations are therefore beginning to ask providers for more clarity. They want to know not just that cooling works, but that it can be proven to work responsibly.
Why Traditional Cooling Architecture Still Matters
In a market dominated by discussions of AI density and immersion cooling, it is easy to overlook the value of traditional mechanical cooling systems. For the majority of enterprise workloads, traditional cooling remains the safest, most mature, and most predictable approach.
A well-engineered chilled water or air cooled system provides:
• Stable operation
• Mature control processes
• Predictable long-term maintenance
• Lower water intensity
• Proven environmental governance
• Clear performance baselines
• Simplified monitoring
• Lower risk of chemical imbalance
• Reduced dependency on new or unproven components
Many of the incidents the industry is now trying to prevent relate directly to over stressed, rapidly retrofitted, or poorly understood cooling systems. Traditional cooling avoids this risk.
This is an advantage at a time when sustainability programmes demand not only efficiency but clarity, repeatability and demonstrable environmental control.
How the Isle of Man Datacentre Approaches Responsible Cooling
Manx Telecom’s datacentres are designed to deliver reliability and environmental control through a traditional, predictable cooling architecture. This approach aligns perfectly with enterprises that want to avoid complexity and instead prioritise consistency.
Our cooling environment includes:
• Continuous monitoring
• Stable mechanical operation
• ISO 14001 aligned environmental controls
• A predictable thermal profile
• Disciplined treatment processes
• Established response plans for anomalies
• 24 to 7 engineering oversight
• Rigorous preventative maintenance scheduling
This creates confidence in both performance and environmental responsibility. Customers gain a stable environment that is not exposed to the risks associated with rapidly evolving cooling technologies, while still delivering strong efficiency and sustainability outcomes.
Why Water Will Become a Board Level Topic
There are three reasons why water stewardship will climb the agenda for datacentre buyers.
1. Reputational expectation
a. Investors and customers now expect sustainability strategies to go beyond PUE. Water consumption will become part of ESG reporting across multiple sectors.
2. Regulatory direction
a. Governments and water authorities are beginning to review datacentre water usage more closely. This will intensify as cooling systems become more water dependent.
3. Operational risk
a. A cooling system fault can take a datacentre offline. As density increases, thermal margins decrease. This makes governance, monitoring and process discipline critical.
Enterprises that rely on traditional compute have a clear advantage here. They can select datacentres with predictable thermal loads and stable water requirements, rather than environments designed primarily for emerging high density clusters.
Water stewardship is becoming one of the most important topics in the datacentre industry, although it has spent years in the background. As cooling systems evolve and thermal loads increase, the industry’s confidence will be tested. Responsible water management is no longer an operational detail. It is an indicator of long term resilience and environmental credibility.
For many organisations, particularly those running traditional compute, the most effective strategy is to choose a datacentre that offers stability rather than novelty. A predictable cooling environment, combined with disciplined environmental controls, provides reassurance and reduces risk.
The Isle of Man Datacentre offers that stability. It gives organisations a consistent, well governed cooling platform, designed for long term reliability rather than rapid technological experimentation.
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