Activists in 15 countries stage two days of protests against datacentres, over 100 groups demand moratorium on large AI projects
UK grid alone faces 73 gigawatts of queued datacentre demand against a 45-gigawatt national peak
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A protest at a datacentre development near West Kilbride in Scotland. Campaigners say the environmental and social costs of the sites are too high. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian
theguardian.com
More than 100 campaign groups across 15 European countries will stage two days of protests against datacentres on Friday and Saturday, demanding a moratorium on large projects under the banner 'Stop Dirty Data Centres'. Planned actions include a protest outside the Polish parliament in Warsaw, a march in Dublin, a demonstration outside a Microsoft datacentre in Denmark, a teach-in near a planned site in Amsterdam, and an event in London's Brick Lane, where a datacentre development has already drawn local opposition.
The organisers expect crowds ranging from a handful at small events to several hundred in Brick Lane and Dublin. Behind the modest turnouts sits a large number: according to research by Germany's Öko-Institut, carbon dioxide emissions from AI datacentres will reach six times their 2023 level by 2030. In the UK, energy use by AI datacentres could cause emissions of up to 123 million tonnes of CO2 over the next decade — roughly what 2.7 million people generate.
The supply pipeline explains the urgency. About 250 datacentre projects exceeding 100 megawatts of energy demand were announced globally between 2021 and 2024; each 100-megawatt project draws as much power as about 300,000 homes. In the UK alone, 315 datacentres are queueing to connect to the grid, representing 73 gigawatts of demand against a national peak demand of 45 gigawatts.
The campaign lists social costs beyond energy: chatbots' effects on mental health, AI eliminating jobs, and datacentres being prioritised over housing. Campaign coordinator Owen Espley notes that opponents of datacentres were among the biggest Democratic winners in this week's US midterms — 'the concerns communities both sides of the Atlantic share about the harms of large-scale data centres'.
The industry counters that datacentres create construction and operations jobs and support AI-driven growth. What neither side disputes is the shape of the deal: the connection, the land, the water and the tax relief are local, while the computing capacity and the revenue are not.
Brussels wants European AI sovereignty; the communities slated to host the server halls have started asking what they get in exchange.