Submission to the UK Parliament Select Committee inquiry ‘Risks and opportunities to the sustainability of data centres in the UK’

This submission responds to an Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into ‘Risks and opportunities to the sustainability of data centres in the UK’. The authors focus on the effects of data centres on climate change and the UK Government’s net zero targets; the Climate Change Committee’s efforts to account for these effects, especially in the Seventh Carbon Budget; the lessons for the UK from other countries’ approach to data centres; and the extent to which data centre resource demands impact competition for resources and decarbonisation.

Core insights

The authors find that:

• A rise in emissions from data centres is largely unavoidable in the short term, given the mismatch between their need for continuous power and the intermittent nature of renewables.
• Data centres and AI tools could catalyse clean technology innovation in the long term, but could also exacerbate carbon lock-in and stranded asset risks by entrenching fossil-fuel generation.
• The Seventh Carbon Budget should explicitly reference data centres and AI.
• In the US, the deployment of data centres has had serious consequences and has met with public opposition.
• These consequences include a 13% rise in coal generation in 2025, electricity price increases of over 200% near data centre clusters, and significant environmental harm from water stress and air pollution.
• Data centres are increasing competition for land, labour and electricity.
• They are also lengthening grid connection queues and competing for the electricians, engineers and construction workers needed to build wind farms, solar installations and grid infrastructure.

Read Sini Matikainen’s article for Politics Home, ‘The rush to build data centres risks saddling our children with unnecessary costs and pollution’, here.

DOI: 10.21953/researchonline.lse.ac.uk.00140259