Enormous AI growth zone datacentre gets planning approval

Planning permission has been approved for what is reported to be one of the UK’s largest artificial intelligence (AI) datacentres, a 1GW project in north Lincolnshire, one of the government’s AI growth zones.

But campaigners have slammed its approval and pointed out what they believe are flawed calculations in its carbon footprint projections. 

The planned development will be Elsham Tech Park. It will extend to approximately 1.5 million square metres and be one of the largest in the UK. Its planned 15 data halls will draw 1GW of electricity, with around 50mW generated on-site. It is proposed that heat from the site will be piped to greenhouses growing tomatoes.

The site lies just east of the Elsham Wolds Industrial Estate, on 435 acres (176 hectares) of currently agricultural land.

At a planned 1GW, that equals 2.2% of the current total UK electricity demand in February this year, according to figures from Ofgem.

The site is in one of the government’s AI growth zones that will receive support to accelerate the development of AI-related infrastructure. 

According to the carbon footprint statement in the planning application, the region is well-suited to such a development because of its proximity to electricity generation centres, much of which is regarded as clean.

It said: “The Humber accounts for approximately 20% of the UK’s total electricity generation and 33% of the nation’s offshore wind capacity.”

The document said that placing datacentre developments close to centres of electricity generation is beneficial because it would alleviate congestion on the grid, reduce transmission losses and align new demand to generation capacity.

But environmental campaign group Foxglove claimed the calculations used to work out the likely carbon footprint for Elsham are faulty. 

It gave evidence to the planning committee that pointed out the carbon footprint statement compares the projected annual emissions of Elsham – around one million tonnes of CO₂ – with the UK’s carbon budget to get a figure of 0.1% of the total carbon budget.

In fact, the UK carbon budget figures cited in the statement are a five-year projection, and if the percentages are recalculated, that makes Elsham’s contribution to the UK carbon budget more like 0.5%.

It is incredibly disappointing to see Big Tech’s dubious claims of economic growth spurred by AI datacentres be put ahead of the ongoing climate crisis

The figure, which is almost equivalent to the total climate pollution caused by all of the UK’s domestic flights (1.2 million tonnes of CO₂), is described in a council report as “not significant”.

Tim Squirrell, head of strategy at Foxglove, said: “In approving this monstrous datacentre, the council failed to properly weigh the enormous harms to the environment of the sheer quantities of electricity this development will use.

“They ignored their own policy, which states 20% of energy must be generated through on-site renewables, and they credulously accepted the developer’s incorrect figures, which underestimated the impact of this datacentre on the UK’s carbon budget by a factor of five.

“It is incredibly disappointing to see Big Tech’s dubious claims of economic growth spurred by AI datacentres be put ahead of the ongoing climate crisis.”

Elsham Tech Park was incorporated last May, with directors shared with Humber Tech Park, a 386MW datacentre campus planned at South Killingholme, also in North Lincolnshire. Humber Tech Park has links to datacentre developer Greystoke Land.