The rush to build data centres risks saddling our children with unnecessary costs and pollution
Waltham Cross, 2026 Google’s new AI data centre (Amazing Aerial/Alamy)
4 min read
The government has put “mainlining AI” into Britain’s veins at the centre of its growth strategy.
But advancing data centre construction without guaranteed access to clean energy and appropriate protections for local communities could imperil UK climate targets and generate the kind of public backlash already brewing in the United States.
America has been at the forefront of the AI boom, but the massive expansion in data centres has resulted in a slew of environmental and social harms. Electricity demand from data centres is significantly increasing emissions, putting stress on local water supplies, damaging local air quality and increasing noise pollution. It’s also raising household bills: electricity prices near data centre clusters have soared as much as 267 per cent relative to five years ago.
Unsurprisingly, recent polling shows that Americans have a mostly negative view of data centres’ local impact on the environment, home energy costs and people’s quality of life, and 57 per cent believe it will end up being a campaign issue in their area.
American politicians are listening: Maine has paused data centre development entirely while authorities assess the sector’s potential impacts, and at least 11 states are considering similar restrictions or bans. With an eye on the upcoming midterms, some Democratic candidates are even pushing for a nationwide moratorium on data centres.
Ireland, which historically positioned itself to attract large tech headquarters, also put a three-year moratorium on data centre expansion, only lifting the ban recently with new rules requiring large data centres to provide their own electricity generation or storage.
UK policymakers should take note. The total pipeline of data centre projects in the UK amounts to approximately 50 gigawatts (GW) of capacity. Even if only the projects at a mature stage of development end up getting built, back-of-the-envelope calculations suggest that by 2035 the electricity demand could be as much as 50 per cent of the UK’s current annual consumption. For comparison, meeting this demand entirely with new onshore wind could require around 610,000 hectares of land – roughly 2.5 times the size of Luxembourg.
Now is a particularly good time to pause and develop a measured strategy, before the concrete is poured for another historical phase of infrastructure overbuild
Without guaranteed access to clean energy, developers working on the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure will likely turn to fossil fuels – more than 100 data centres in the UK are already planning to burn gas for electricity. In a high-demand scenario, data centre-related emissions in 2035 could be up to 35 per cent of the 2040 carbon budget. Given that we are already in an energy crisis and facing relatively high electricity prices in the UK, the government will be in a difficult position to juggle the demands for affordable, clean energy for households, existing industry and new data centres.
Now is a particularly good time to pause and develop a measured strategy, before the concrete is poured for another historical phase of infrastructure overbuild – a pretty plausible scenario, given the seven-fold difference between the highest and lowest estimates of data centre energy demand. Overbuilding now could create future stranded assets and leave billpayers on the hook for the associated infrastructure costs.
Data centres are tied to the UK government’s AI and quantum computing growth aspirations, and it’s understandable that the government is hoping for a technological solution to grow its way out of the current economic malaise. But while the associated costs are very immediate, the size of the potential benefit to society is still unclear, and could even result in net job losses. The public is increasingly sceptical that they will be seeing the benefits of AI, particularly young people – a voting demographic Labour will need to work to win over. By moving forward with data centre expansion without a sustainable strategy for powering them, the government is risking clear and immediate sunk costs against the hope of future growth, on an unpredictable timeline. It would do well to learn from the political toll that this is already taking in the US.
Sini Matikainen is the Director of economic and fiscal policy at the Centre for Economic Transition Expertise at the LSE
