A pair of planned data centres in England are on course to produce more carbon emissions than ExxonMobil generates across the whole of the UK, according to new analysis that has raised serious alarm bells about the country’s ability to hit its climate targets.
The two sites, located in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire, are predicted to emit a combined 4.5 million tonnes of carbon per year once they are fully up and running. To put that in perspective, that figure eclipses the total UK carbon footprint of one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel companies.
Climate experts say the findings expose a growing blind spot in Britain’s green agenda. While the government has made bold commitments around net zero and legally binding emissions targets, the rapid expansion of data centre infrastructure is quietly eating into those goals before the buildings have even been finished.
“This is a serious threat to the UK’s climate commitments,” one analyst warned. “We are approving projects of enormous scale without properly accounting for what they will mean for our emissions in the long run.”
The data centre boom has been driven largely by the explosion in demand for cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and streaming services. Every time someone uses ChatGPT, watches Netflix, or stores files online, energy is being consumed in vast warehouse-style facilities packed with servers running around the clock. Those servers need constant cooling, and all of that requires huge amounts of electricity.
England has become a particularly attractive destination for data centre investment, with the area around London and the surrounding home counties emerging as one of Europe’s busiest hubs for the industry. Land is available, grid connections are possible, and planning permissions, until recently at least, have been relatively straightforward to obtain.
But the scale of what is now being proposed is starting to prompt real concern. The Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire projects alone represent a carbon commitment that would have been unthinkable from a single industry sector just a decade ago.
Critics argue that the planning system has simply not kept pace with the environmental implications of approving these kinds of developments. Local councils weigh up jobs, investment, and economic growth when assessing applications, but the national carbon cost of individual projects rarely features prominently in those decisions.
The UK has legally committed to reaching net zero emissions by 2050, with a series of intermediate targets along the way. The Climate Change Committee, which monitors progress, has already flagged that the country is falling behind on several fronts. Adding millions of tonnes of new emissions from data centres makes the task considerably harder.
Proponents of the industry argue that data centres can be powered by renewable energy, and that many operators have made pledges to match their electricity consumption with green power. But campaigners point out that matching and actually running on renewables are two different things, and that the sheer volume of electricity demand from these facilities puts pressure on a grid that is still far from fully decarbonised.
There are also questions about whether the renewable energy pledges made by big tech firms and data centre operators actually result in new clean energy being built, or whether they simply involve buying certificates that represent power already being generated elsewhere.
The findings are likely to intensify scrutiny of the government’s approach to data centre planning. Ministers have been keen to position the UK as a global leader in AI and digital infrastructure, and data centres are seen as a key part of that ambition. But environmentalists say that ambition cannot come at the cost of the country’s climate obligations.
For the communities in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire living near the proposed sites, the debate is also about more than just carbon. Data centres bring relatively few local jobs for their size, consume enormous amounts of water for cooling, and can place significant strain on local electricity networks.
With more projects in the pipeline across England, pressure is mounting on ministers to take a harder look at the cumulative impact of approving so many large-scale facilities in such a short space of time. The question is whether the economic case for becoming a data centre powerhouse can be squared with the legal obligation to cut emissions. Right now, the numbers suggest those two goals are heading in very different directions.