By Simon Jessop
LONDON, Feb 27 (Reuters) – Activists are set to take to British streets on Friday for two days of protests against the expansion of data centres to serve booming demand for artificial intelligence, and the impact of the facilities on communities and the environment.
The protests, coordinated by environmental charity Global Action Plan, are part of a growing international backlash against the power- and water-hungry sites needed to meet surging demand for AI computing power.
“Big Tech’s unchecked construction of hyperscale AI data centres is putting the UK’s climate targets at risk,” said Oliver Hayes, Head of Campaigns at Global Action Plan, in a statement.
Among the biggest is set to be the ‘March Against The Machines’ event starting outside the offices of OpenAI on Saturday at midday.
While there is no formal definition of what a data centre is in Britain or how many there are, a techUK report from November 2024 put the number at around 450.
The British energy regulator said 140 data centres had signalled they wanted to plug into the grid and could require 50 gigawatts of power. By comparison, it said peak British electricity demand on February 11 was 45 GW.
OpenAI said in January it would create a community plan for each of the sites in its Stargate operation, a $500 billion initiative to build AI data centres for training and inference.
Tech companies are investing directly in power infrastructure as energy access becomes a critical constraint on AI expansion, with the push for larger and more numerous data centres driving electricity demand higher.
In Havering, east London, Ian Pirie, Coordinator Friends of the Earth Havering, said plans to build locally were “completely inappropriate in a semi-rural Green Belt area”, citing what he called its power and water needs and the destruction of farmland.
Leigh Tugwood, Co-chair of Iver Heath Residents Association, protesting against a build in Buckinghamshire, said he was concerned that datacentre development was being fast-tracked at the expense of local communities.
“We are, therefore, in support of a moratorium on all future hyperscale data centre development unless and until there is informed debate, a public inquiry and a meaningful community-designed engagement framework that ensures ownership of the process by those most likely to be impacted,” he said.
(Reporting by Simon Jessop, Editing by William Maclean)
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