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UK Greens call temporary ban on new data centres

politicsAug 28, 202627794

Green Party peer Zack Polanski has called for a freeze on approvals for new data centres in England, arguing they are “energy guzzling, water guzzling” and should be limited to local-scale facilities with greater community say. Polanski made the call during a visit to a proposed East London site and said it was “outrageous” to treat AI data centres as critical infrastructure while three-quarters of the country face drought. The BBC notes there are roughly 477 data centres in the UK, many clustered around London and the south, and that centres do not have to report water use. The Water Research Centre estimated centres in England use about 1.9 billion litres of potable water a year, around 0.2% of the non-household market, while charity Global Action Plan suggested large centres could use up to 1.5 million litres a day. The government warned a pause would risk losing investment and leave the UK dependent on overseas computing for sensitive processing, saying such a pause “would be a disaster for jobs and national security.” The BBC found ministers have not carried out an environmental assessment on their Delivering AI growth zones paper; the government described that paper as a statement of intent rather than formal policy. Mark Acton of the Data Centre Alliance countered that data centres do not take water from local communities and can be hard to get planning permission for even in AI growth zones.

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