Just Two Of The UK’s Planned AI Datacenters Will Emit More Carbon Than ExxonMobil

According to a new analysis, just two of the UK’s planned AI datacenters will emit more carbon than ExxonMobil, the world’s second-largest fossil fuel company.

The analysis comes as community-led pushback against datacenters gains momentum. New datacenters are almost universally unpopular, and more than 500 counties and municipalities have delayed datacenter projects or introduced bans.

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As reported by the Guardian, analysis by the tech-focused non-profit Foxglove found that the Wapseys Wood datacenter in Buckinghamshire and the Quest Park datacenter in Bedfordshire will produce more than 4.5 million tonnes of carbon emissions once they are fully operational. Meanwhile, according to the energy think tank Ember, ExxonMobil emitted 3.9 million tonnes of carbon emissions in 2023.

There are already 315 datacenters waiting to connect to the UK’s energy grid. Once connected, this would require an additional 73gw of electricity, nearly twice the peak winter energy demand for the entire UK. Wapseys Wood and Quest Park, which will require 1.3gw (gigawatts) of energy between them, plan to build a gas-fired power station at each site. Separately, the Guardian recently reported that the UK government is unaware of what the country’s largest datacenters are being used for. The government notably dissolved its technology department in July.

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Water shortages, the climate crisis, and animal farming

Even without hundreds of new datacenters, the Environment Agency estimates that England’s public water supply could fall short of demand by around five billion litres per day by 2055. In August, more than 71 percent of the UK was in drought after the summer’s record-breaking heatwaves, driven by the worsening climate crisis.

A recent briefing by Water UK criticized the government’s water forecasts as “fatally flawed.” Water UK highlighted how the current forecasts “explicitly exclude” data centers, and how government AI plans make “not a single mention of water.”

Along with AI datacenters, golf courses, fish farms, and agriculture are also major users of public water. According to Bryant Research, while ChatGPT uses 18.2 billion litres of water, dairy production alone requires approximately 4,555 billion litres.

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