AI is all over the news - stories of its potential power to transform how we solve problems, its acceleration of mass job loss and wage suppression etc. are everywhere. It's also been hard to avoid the stories of AI's horrifying social impact such as its use to create nonconsensual 'intimate' images of real people, predominantly women and children.
Up until recently though there's been very little reported on AI's environmental impact. That's changing and the focus of the environmental discussion about AI has been the hyperscale data centres that house the servers and computational power that make AI possible. Where and how many of these mega datacentres are placed in communities is a growing source of tension all over the world - including in London and across England.
These new breed of data centres are vast and their demand for energy and water rivals that of cities and this demand looks set to grow. There are reports of this affecting domestic energy bills and water supply. Both these issues are pertinent in the UK context. We have some of the highest energy bills in Western Europe and will be dealing with a massive shortfall of 5 billion litres per day from in our tap water supply in our children's lifetimes (2055), according to the government's own estimates.
The UK government has committed to subsidising the cost of these privately-owned data centres to the tune of £4.3 billion pounds. It has also committed to centralising planning permission decision-making for data centre applications. In fact, it has overridden local authorities' rejections of data centre planning applications on multiple occasions. In these cases, central government has been dismissive of concerns about environmental impact. This is why the advocacy group, Foxglove is challenging them in court.
Climate Action Lewisham (CAL) thinks the UK government's lack of transparency around how it assesses the environmental impact of data centres and its willingness to override the democratic will of local people in favour of tech billionaires is worrying.
We want to better understand the environmental impact of data centres and what it could mean for the ordinary people. Why not join us as we hear more from Foxglove about their campaign here in the UK? Let's learn together about why so many people around the world, from the US to Latin America and across Europe, are resisting the building of these hyperscale data centres in their neighbourhoods and communities.
We will hear from Tim Squirrell, Head of Strategy at Foxlgove.
Q&A session and Lewisham based discussion to follow.
https://www.foxglove.org.uk/
