The great datacentre backlash: The campaigners

Protests impact datacentre builds

The sheer scale of the global datacentre build out was always likely to elicit a response. In the first quarter of 2026, hyperscalers including Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta projected that spending this year on IT and datacentre infrastructure will reach as much as $725bn.

The UK, meanwhile, has an aggressive plan to build out AI and datacentre infrastructure. In July 2025, UK secretary of state for science, innovation and technology Peter Kyle said: “We forecast that the UK will need at least 6GW of AI-capable datacentre capacity by 2030.”

According to Computer Weekly’s analysis, that target will likely not be met, given the planning status of many projects, with UK datacentre capacity on course to total 4.9GW by 2030. 

A good proportion of those planned facilities with and without consent will likely come under increasing pressure from anti-datacentre campaigns. Data from industry analysts STL Partners shows that more than $42bn of proposed datacentre projects across 10 European countries have been delayed, reworked or cancelled due to public concerns.

The situation in the US is even more pronounced. According to STL, as of 2025, public opposition had impacted approximately $77bn of projects. Northern Virginia was the epicentre of much of the build out, and consequently the most pushback, with approximately $48.7bn of delayed capacity. 

However, projects across at least nine states – covering every region of the US – have been hit by opposition and protests. Yet another indicator of popular momentum around the issue is the recent involvement of US environmental campaigner Erin Brockovich, famously portrayed on film by actor Julia Roberts.

“Datacentres have traditionally been part of the background, obviously very critical in the back end but largely in terms of the public eye, relatively invisible,” said Jonas Topp-Mugglestone, STL consultant on a recent webcast. “But what we’ve seen recently is a very rapid shift into the spotlight”

Numerous opposition groups

That visibility is increasingly negative and reflects and reinforces the ecosystem of datacentre organisations critical of datacentre construction that have emerged in the recent past. This includes national advocacy groups, local community coalitions, environmental NGOs, and ad‑hoc neighbourhood alliances. Greenpeace, for example, has been actively targeting datacentres and Big Tech for more than 15 years, with campaigns such as Make IT Green, How Clean is Your Cloud and Clicking Clean.

Global Action Plan (GAP) is a UK-based environmental charity which is involved in several datacentre campaigns. One of its most high-profile recent successes was as part of a group including tech-focused campaigning organisation Foxglove, and the Iver Heath Residents’ Association. The group recently forced a government reversal and new environmental conditions to be imposed on a proposed 90-megawatt datacentre at Woodlands, Buckinghamshire.

GAP campaigns manager Owen Espley says his organisation is there to support local resident groups but also campaigns via other channels. “We’re producing research and policy, and engaging with politicians and decision-makers to make sure they understand what’s happening with datacentres,” he says.

“We also scrutinise planning applications for environmental shortcomings and challenge decisions where necessary, as in the court case with Foxglove over the datacentre in Buckinghamshire. We also do work to engage with, talk to and stand alongside community groups who are facing datacentres.”

Espley refutes any suggestion that the larger groups such as GAP and Foxglove instigate or direct grassroots action and says the interaction is two-way. “Often, what we’re doing is providing them with information, so signposting them to the reports we have on the climate impact,” he says. “We’re not there to dictate to them how they campaign or what issues they campaign on.”

Another high-profile datacentre opposition campaign is underway close to the village of North Ockendon, part of the London Borough of Havering. Residents here, together with local representatives of environmental group Friends of the Earth, object to a proposed 600MW facility backed by digital infrastructure company Digital Reef. 

Computer Weekly spoke with some of the residents, who preferred to remain anonymous, but object to being described as anti-datacentre campaigners. “We are not anti-datacentre campaigners. This is condescending and pejorative, implying we don’t understand the technical and environmental issues,” the group says.

“We are concerned residents, whose lives, health, local environment and properties will be permanently blighted if this highly speculative and non-viable proposal should ever be approved. We want to protect the Metropolitan Green Belt and its ecology.”

Concerns and motivations 

The arguments for and against datacentres are complex and often highly technical, but it is possible to broadly categorise them. 

According to STL Partners, the most common reasons for opposition to datacentres are rural land loss, water consumption and power grid strain. Other factors include generator noise, CO₂ emissions, visual impact and nitrogen emissions. STL reported that communities generally feel like something is being taken away from them.  

A key aggravating factor for new datacentre projects versus other large construction projects is often the secrecy that surrounds them, according to Rose Weinschenk from datacentre certification and advisory firm Uptime Institute. 

“Communities were initially open to datacentres but cited a lack of transparency during the process,” she says. “Many felt companies didn’t offer reliable channels for feedback, and some objected to the use of shell entities to hide identities. Over time, trust and patience diminished.”

Speed of construction amid the AI arms race is also a factor: “The worry is that the rush to build that we’re seeing is making it tempting for countries to weaken the scrutiny and democratic participation of local people in that decision making,” says GAP’s Espley.

Industry view of campaigners

From the industry side, there is a perception that campaigners are often misinformed about the impact of datacentres, and at least some of the pushback is anchored in generalised anti-AI and anti-Big Tech sentiment. 

“We are at a point where you know information that is not always correct is being dispersed by these groups. I call it the great meme-ification of datacentre facts,” says Uptime’s Weinschenk.

Datacentre developers have a bit of a nerve to complain about ‘misinformation’ when they – along with the UK government – are the primary culprits of this problem

But GAPs Espley argues that opacity from the datacentre industry should share the blame. “The industry has resisted transparency, and that’s a significant obstacle to having proper democratic discussion of the impacts the datacentre industry is likely to have as it grows at such a scale.”

Carl Walker, head of societal insights at datacentre engineering consultants Hoare Lea, argues that most local campaigners are well informed but there is a wider lack of knowledge around datacentres. 

“I don’t think these objections are from what you might call the ‘tinfoil hat’-wearing brigade. This is not what we’re talking about. But people generally do not understand what datacentres are, what they do, what impact they have and why they’re there. And it’s not because people are ignorant – it’s because, why would [they know]? Nobody takes the time to explain it.”

Donald Campbell, advocacy director at Foxglove, told Computer Weekly that if there are gaps in information about datacentre impact, those are due to the fundamental failures of the industry and the UK government.

“Datacentre developers have a bit of a nerve to complain about ‘misinformation’ when they – along with the UK government – are the primary culprits of this problem,” he says.

Solutions and future directions

What’s the end game for campaigners? It varies from case to case, with modification or halting of construction among the obvious ones. 

“We need a moratorium now on new datacentres until the planning system catches up to this 21st century threat, so we can properly scrutinise datacentres’ speculative claims,” said Leigh Tugwood, co-chair of the Iver Heath Residents’ Association, in a statement following the news of new environmental conditions placed on the operator.

Foxglove’s Campbell said his organisation, together with others, recently wrote to the secretary of state setting out the headline points which need to be covered in the forthcoming National Policy Statement on datacentres. 

“It is worth noting that the government said this NPS would be published soon after new powers came into force allowing datacentres to be considered as Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects [NSIPS],” he says. “However, there is still no sign of it even though the powers came into force at the start of this year.”  

But there is also realisation among campaigners that some new datacentre projects are justifiable, given government and industry plans to keep the UK competitive in AI development. 

“What we’re calling for is a much more planned, clearer process that the government sets out. They may do this in the national policy statement they promised, but it is overdue,” says GAP’s Espley. “It should set out a really clear, robust economic case for datacentres, to say why they’re needed, what the macro-level environmental impacts are going to be and how that will be managed.”

Other approaches include a more inclusive approach to datacentre planning, such as that outlined in Hoare Lea’s recently published social charter for datacentres. These frameworks and other responses will be explored in more depth in the next and final part of this series, which will examine the datacentre industry’s response, from better community engagement to approaches such as improved sustainability and less obtrusive datacentre building designs.