Neil Richardson is Head of Development for Industrial Water, Energy and Local Loops of Energy at Veolia UK, where he holds a UK wide remit and sits on Veolia's global data centre steering group.

A building services engineer by background, Neil has spent more than a decade as an operational and commercial leader, focused on energy and water infrastructure projects. He has been with Veolia for 14 years and brings almost 30 years of industry experience.

His work centres on recovering and reusing energy and water that would otherwise be lost, turning industrial and digital infrastructure into assets that serve the communities around them. At Developing Data Centres 2026 he will focus primarily on heat, while also touching on water and power solutions, drawing on tangible examples and live projects to show how data centres can become a genuine community asset.