The government is being urged to “properly scrutinise” the environmental impact of the nation’s growing datacentre footprint by non-profit Foxglove, which is currently overseeing the first legal challenge of its kind against a hyperscale build in the UK.
The organisation, which campaigns for fairness in technology and the protection of local communities, has published research that suggests the carbon savings generated by the UK’s use of electric cars (2.9 metric tonnes) will be wiped out by the construction of 10 new datacentres.
“The datacentres being planned and built across the country will require large amounts of electricity, adding significantly to our carbon emissions,” said Foxglove’s Big tech datacentres: A threat to UK decarbonisation report.
“Developers’ own figures indicate that just ten of the largest datacentres in planning or construction will cause annual emissions equivalent to 2,745,538 tonnes of CO2,” the report continued. “[And] a 2.7 metric tonne increase in annual emissions from datacentres would effectively wipe out the carbon savings expected in 2025 from the switch to electric cars (2.9 metric tonnes).”
The report’s creation was prompted by a concern about the lack of “detailed estimates” available regarding the impact the inevitable uptick in electricity demand from the UK’s growing datacentre footprint will have on the nation. According to Foxglove, when it sought to get some clarity on this front, the information available was “flawed, incomplete or inconsistent” and “entirely sourced from datacentre developers”, leading to concerns about bias.
This data is the source of Foxglove’s claims that 10 datacentres could wipe out the carbon savings accumulated by the UK’s growing adoption of electric vehicles, but – as stated in its report – this particular figure only tells part of the story.
“With over 100 datacentres currently in the planning or construction process, many of which do not provide carbon emissions figures or even clarity on the size of the datacentre, the true total for all datacentres will be many times higher,” the report stated. “The figures provided…are the tip of the iceberg…and are in many cases inconsistent and likely to involve significant underestimates.”
Foxglove said its findings highlight a need for “a clear, consistent, unbiased picture of the impact of planned and existing UK datacentres on the environment”, and that the government “needs to act urgently” to mitigate the threat server farms pose to the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.
Since coming to power in July 2024, the government has made good on its pre-election promise to fast-track the development of datacentres, in the interests of economic growth. This work has resulted in a steady stream of announcements from datacentre developers about their plans to build hyperscale datacentres in various corners of the UK, with some – as recently revealed by Computer Weekly – being waved through without any assessment about the environmental impact these builds will have taking place first.
Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, said the government seems to be oblivious about the “huge environmental cost” caused by the datacentres it is “ramming through” the planning system: “There has been no proper assessment of the huge increase in energy demand, and massive carbon emissions, that will result from the construction of large numbers of ‘hyperscale’ datacentres. Worse still, ministers are pushing these datacentres through the planning system without even bothering to carry out environmental impact assessments.
“Unless the government changes course, the result will be that Big Tech reaps the profits while the British public are left to pick up the tab, in terms of environmental damage, carbon emissions and soaring energy costs.”
