\n<\/p>\n
The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire.<\/p>\n
Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part of the Labour government\u2019s push to turn the UK into an AI powerhouse by trebling computing capacity to meet rising demand amid what it terms \u201ca global race\u201d as AI usage takes off.<\/p>\n
The home counties datacentre is relatively small compared with one planned in north Lincolnshire that will have about 10 times the capacity, and is dwarfed by one planned by Meta\u2019s Mark Zuckerberg in Louisiana, which will be more than 50 times larger as he seeks to achieve digital \u201csuperintelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n
But Foxglove, the tech equity campaign group bringing the legal challenge alongside the environmental charity Global Action Plan, said the energy demand could push up local electricity prices and said it was \u201cbaffling\u201d that the government had not carried out an environmental assessment.<\/p>\n
Oliver Hayes, the head of campaigns at Global Action Plan, said Rayner\u2019s \u201clack of meaningful scrutiny\u201d was a worrying signal as more datacentres were planned around the UK. \u201cAre the societal benefits of chatbots and deepfakes really worth sacrificing progress towards a safe climate and dependable water supply?\u201d he said. \u201cThe government must reconsider its rash decision or risk an embarrassing reality check in court.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last June, Buckinghamshire council refused planning permission for the facility in Iver on what was once a landfill site, saying it \u201cwould constitute inappropriate development in the green belt\u201d and would harm the appearance of the area, air quality and habitats of protected species.<\/p>\n
Local objectors said the two buildings rising to 18 metres would \u201cdwarf the area\u201d and would be an \u201ceyesore\u201d for ramblers, and that there were more appropriate brownfield sites. Other locals complained datacentres were intrusive and noisy and provided few jobs, although the applicant, Greystoke, claims it will create about 230 jobs and support hundreds more in the wider economy.<\/p>\n
Following an appeal against the refusal, a public inquiry favoured consent, concluding that no environmental impact assessment was needed.<\/p>\n
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Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.<\/span><\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n In March, the technology secretary, Peter Kyle, attacked the \u201carchaic planning processes\u201d holding up the construction of technology infrastructure and complained that \u201cthe datacentres we need to power our digital economy get blocked because they ruin the view from the M25\u201d.<\/p>\n Rayner granted planning permission last month in what was seen as an example of the government\u2019s pro-development \u201cgrey belt\u201d strategy to build on green belt land viewed as of lower environmental value.<\/p>\n But Rosa Curling, co-executive director of Foxglove, said that thanks to Rayner\u2019s decision, \u201clocal people and businesses in Buckinghamshire will soon be competing with the power-guzzling behemoth to keep the lights on \u2013 which, as we\u2019ve seen in the [United] States, usually means sky-high prices\u201d.<\/p>\n The energy industry has estimated the rapid adoption of AI could mean datacentres will account for a 10th of electricity demand in Great Britain by 2050, five to 10 times more than today. And while the Iver datacentre is proposed to be air-cooled, many use vast quantities of water. In March, Thames Water warned that its region was \u201cseriously water-stressed \u2026 and yet there could be as many as 70 new datacentres in our area over the next few years, with each one potentially using upwards of 1,000 litres of water per second, or the equivalent of 24,000 homes\u2019 usage\u201d.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Greystoke said Rayner had reached the right decision and recognised that the datacentre \u201cmeets a vital national need for digital infrastructure, and will bring over \u00a31bn of investment, transforming a former landfill site next to the M25\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cModern datacentres play a key role in advancing scientific research, medical diagnostics and sustainable energy,\u201d they said. \u201cThe datacentre campus incorporates measures which benefit the environment, including appropriate building standards, solar panels and heat pumps.\u201d<\/p>\n The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government declined to comment on threats of legal action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, has been hit with a legal challenge after she overruled a local council to approve a hyperscale datacentre on green belt land by the M25 in Buckinghamshire. Campaigners bringing the action are complaining that no environmental impact assessment was made for the 90MW datacentre, which was approved as part<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16903,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[4739,10135,662,10134,728,70,1307,324,124,3621],"class_list":{"0":"post-16902","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-angela","9":"tag-belt","10":"tag-challenge","11":"tag-datacentre","12":"tag-green","13":"tag-hit","14":"tag-land","15":"tag-legal","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-rayner"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16902","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16902"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16902\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16902"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16902"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16902"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}