Datacentres are becoming a flashpoint in the UK and US, with public and political concern focused on their demands for electricity, water and land. Calls for bans, moratoria and stricter rules are growing as communities question who should pay for the infrastructure needed to support them.
The concern becomes easier to understand when future datacentres are expected to demand more electricity than the entire United Kingdom. That raises a basic question: should companies be allowed to transfer the cost of their operations to society and the electorate?
Making datacentres carry their own costs
One proposed answer is to make each datacentre generate all its own electricity and reduce its CO2 emissions to zero. These sites will have vast areas of roofing and car parks that could hold solar panels, along with space for wind generation, battery storage and emissions scrubbers.
This approach would connect the size of a datacentre’s environmental burden to the resources it must provide for itself. Instead of asking the public to absorb the cost of extra energy and pollution, the companies running these facilities would have to plan for those needs from the start.
Malcolm Fraser put the challenge in blunt terms: “If AI is so clever, it should be required to design itself datacentres that do not command all our water and energy.”
The pressure is not limited to electricity. Scottish data centres powering AI are already using enough water to fill 27 million bottles a year. That figure gives the debate a physical scale: these facilities need resources that communities also depend on.
A fast-growing footprint across the UK
There are around 477 datacentres in the UK, with many clustered around London and the south of England. The number, highlighted last year, helps explain why the issue has moved beyond individual planning disputes and into national politics.
A proposed development shows how large the buildings can become. In a village 21 miles north of Edinburgh, a plan exists for a datacentre larger than the village itself. The building would stand 35 metres high and cover an area larger than 100 football pitches.
The development in Auchertool, Fife, has attracted 1,600 objections. David Torrance, a member of the Scottish parliament, said: “The public pressure is huge.”
That pressure reflects more than opposition to one building. The size of the proposed site, combined with its water and energy needs, has made the question of local consent hard to separate from the wider debate over AI infrastructure.
Efficiency also means creating less digital waste
Responsibility may not rest only with datacentre operators. A structure of small government charges for digital communications could deter people from generating junk, reducing the demand created by unnecessary messages and data.
Research suggests that if each person in this country sent one less “thank-you” email a day, the annual saving would exceed 16,000 tonnes of CO2. The example is small, but it shows how everyday digital habits connect to the physical infrastructure behind them.
That idea also changes the tone of the argument. Datacentres are built for digital services, but the environmental cost does not stay online. It reaches into electricity generation, water use, land and local planning decisions.
Jobs, security and the cost of expansion
Supporters of datacentre construction point to the wider role these facilities play. Mark Acton, executive director of the Data Centre Alliance, said: “We depend on these things massively.” A government spokesman warned: “It would be a disaster for jobs and national security.”
Those arguments set up the central conflict. The UK and US want the services and economic benefits linked to datacentres, but communities are being asked to accept the demands that come with them. The question is whether growth should continue without conditions or whether companies should meet the full cost of the energy, water and emissions their sites require.
Zack Polanski, the Green Party leader, said: “We need to slam the brakes on these energy guzzling, water guzzling data centres.” Rosa Curling, co-executive director of Foxglove, offered a different version of the same demand: “Any action to pause or slow down this construction frenzy is positive, but the reality is that the government and local authorities already have the power to say that data centres can only be built if tech billionaires, not the British public, pay for their costs in full.”
The debate now has a clear choice in front of it. Datacentres can remain facilities whose biggest costs fall on the public, or they can be required to generate their own electricity, reach zero CO2 emissions and account for their water use. With 1,600 objections in Auchertool and concern spreading across the UK and US, that choice is no longer a distant policy question.
Based on
- How to tackle the climate impact of datacentres | Letters — theguardian.com
- Is the environmental impact of datacentres finally cutting through? | Environment | The Guardian — theguardian.com
- Greens call for temporary ban on new data centres — bbc.com
- ‘Never seen this level of objection’: Scotland pushes back against datacentre boom | Datacentres – UK | The Guardian — theguardian.com
