We show that a deterministic single-tape Turing machine, operating in polynomial space with respect to the input length, can be efficiently simulated (both in terms of time and space) by a semi-uniform family of P systems with active membranes and three polarizations, using only communication rules. Then, basing upon this simulation, we prove that a result similar to the space hierarchy theorem can be obtained for P systems with active membranes: the larger the amount of space we can use during the computations, the harder the problems we are able to solve.