New Google datacentre in Essex
Posted: 17th September 2025
The Guardian reported on Monday that a new Google
datacentre in Essex was expected to emit more than half a million tonnes of
carbon dioxide a year.
Guardian 16th Sept 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/16/google-ai-investment-uk-trump-visit-rachel-reeves
A new Google datacentre in Essex is expected to emit more than half a
million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, equivalent to about 500 short-haul
flights a week, planning documents show. Spread across 52 hectares (128
acres), the Thurrock “hyperscale datacentre” will be part of a wave of
mammoth computer and AI power houses if it secures planning consent. The
plans were submitted by a subsidiary of Google’s parent company,
Alphabet, and the carbon impact emerged before a concerted push by Donald
Trump’s White House and Downing Street to ramp up AI capacity in Britain.
Multibillion-dollar investment deals with some of Silicon Valley’s
biggest tech companies are expected to be announced during the US
president’s state visit to the UK, which starts on Tuesday. Keir
Starmer’s government has forecast a 13-fold rise in the amount of
computer processing power AI will use by 2035 and is scrambling to supply
the datacentres to meet that demand in the hope the technology will boost
Britain’s insipid economic productivity. Deals involving Nvidia, the
world’s largest AI chip maker, and OpenAI, the company behind the ChatGPT
AI assistant, are anticipated. But campaigners have said a wave of massive
new computer warehouses will crank up Britain’s greenhouse gas emissions
and put pressure on finite power and water resources.
Guardian 15th Sept 2025
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/sep/15/google-datacentre-kent-co2-thurrock-uk-ai