Can local communities turn the tide on AI data centers?

The “AI boom” has caused a surge in tech companies proposing to build massive data centres across the UK. Concerned about the resource use, disruption, noise, environmental impacts and the lack of public consent, local communities are pushing back.

Expansion and destruction

As the digital world expands so too does the amount of data that’s processed and stored. Data centres have become a key part of the physical infrastructure that enables this: they’re large – often huge – buildings that house arrays of servers, storage drives, cables, batteries and cooling systems.

Around 500 data centres have been built in the UK since the 1990s. But AI adoption is now driving a massive expansion, with the government expecting data centre capacity to double or even quadruple within the next few years. There are thought to be at least 100 proposed data centres angling to be given the go-ahead, and some of them are absolutely enormous ‘hyperscale’ developments.

It’s hard to overstate the demand AI expansion – and the data centres needed for it – is imposing on global resources: tech companies are sidelining their sustainability goals and using far more energy than ever before; drinkable water is being drained from places that desperately need it; hunger for minerals is driving yet more toxic and exploitative conditions for the people who mine them.

Concerned communities

Communities living near proposed data centres are increasingly worried about the noise, pollution and water stress their new neighbours would bring. They’re also seeing data centres consume space at the cost of agricultural land, local wildlife, housing and other valued infrastructure.

Nick Richards, who lives in east Cardiff where plans for a new data centre threaten a local hospital park and ride service, tells me:

The data centre will harm the community in many different ways. Staff and patients will have to spend up to an hour finding a parking space at the hospital. The gas turbines will have people living within a few miles breathing pollutants. Residents will be subjected to an intense humming noise continuously. My housing estate was only completed this year and most residents now fear they will never be able to sell their homes if the data centre goes ahead.

He also fears for how the community will fare as climate impacts intensify. He continues:

Then there’s the ‘heat island’ effect, where it’s understood that gas-powered data centres can raise the temperature of their surroundings by up to nine degrees. We’ve had a number of wildfires in that area this summer, and with 2027 set to be the hottest in a thousand years, I can’t picture things getting any better.

Communities respond

In Cardiff and beyond – including in London, Devon, Slough, Havering, Leeds, Selby and across Scotland – local people are organising their opposition to new data centres via campaigns and protests.

Local authorities are meant to inform residents who stand to be impacted by planning decisions and give them a chance to have their views considered. But campaigners are having to take on a lot of this work themselves, as Richards tells me:

I’ve spent two days walking door to door notifying the residents of the development; only 15% of them knew about it. The Local Authority’s public consultation consisted of four A4 notices on lampposts and three classifieds on page 38 of the Western Mail newspaper.

Communities have a huge challenge on their hands, especially as the government seems determined to fasttrack developments in the hope of becoming an AI ‘superpower’. Even when councils take positions against new data centres – for example, in Buckinghamshire, Slough and Tower Hamlets – they can find themselves overruled by ministers.

Momentum building?

Despite the hurdles, campaigners are buoyed by the groundswell in the USA where opposition to data centre expansion is becoming mainstream. Backlash there has blocked or delayed at least 75 major projects within a three-month window. New York and Texas now have temporary bans on new data centre approvals, with more than a dozen states considering similar action.

But could the grassroots organising and legal challenges we are seeing here in the UK replicate this momentum? All the campaigners I’ve spoken to hope it will, but also acknowledge how much effort it will take. According to Richards:

You can’t get disheartened… if you keep speaking to people, things will start to happen.

Featured image via The Commons / Climate Camp Ireland

By Abi Perrin

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