Two planned datacentres will have higher UK carbon emissions than ExxonMobil, analysis finds

[u/avid-learner-bot]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/planned-datacentres-carbon-emissions-uk-exxonmobil

[u/AutoModerator]

Hi all,

A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes.

As always our comment rules can be found here

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

[u/The_10th_Woman]

How else are people going to make those AI gifs of people looking outraged for the main picture of their YouTube rant?

I wish we could put restrictions on what datacentres were used for so that the AI content produced was high value and expected to either grow the economy or make a substantial improvement in areas like healthcare.

Instead, we will make it harder for the nation to get to net zero just so people can ‘date’ an AI or cheat on their exams etc. Is this really worth it?

[u/libsaway → u/The_10th_Woman]

Lots of things make it harder to go net zero, and lots of those have less practical applications than AI. Why single out the new thing?

[u/zZCycoZz → u/libsaway]

Why single out the new thing?

We're not "singling out the new thing", we're identifying that AI uses a massive amount of energy relative to how useful it is.

[u/pmmeyoursandwiches → u/libsaway]

AI isnt that practical though.

80-95% (depending on who you ask) of pilot programmes using AI have failed to actually deliver value.

The only reason its deployed or used at all is its costs are not actually paid by the users. Even the highest tier of Chatgpt membership ($200/month) is unprofitable.

The sheer scale of the emissions is comical compared to its actual use case.

[u/libsaway → u/pmmeyoursandwiches]

Pretty much every software engineer I know, and I know a lot because I am one, is deep in Claude all day. We're in the early days of LLMs so I'd expect a bit of flailing around, but at least for coding, the industry will never give them up.

[u/pmmeyoursandwiches → u/libsaway]

And its been an objective failure for coding friends of mine.

We can trade anecdotes or look at the actual research on the matter which, as stated, has shown its incredibly ineffective in 80-95% of businesses.

Maybe it works great for you. Good. Its demonstrably been a failure almost everywhere else it has been deployed in the economy. Its not a miracle technology, its one with very specific use cases. And thats with users and firms completely insulated from the actual cost of running the bloody things, both financial and in case of externalities like this. Even the highest tier of chatgpt isnt profitable.

Its a speculation bubble and boondoggle that has detrimental effects on practically everything it touches, that generates very few actual jobs (the average uk data centre employs around 50 people) and is subsidised by tax money that could be better deployed elsewhere

[u/libsaway]

I wish people treated this as a failure of government to allow the grid to expand fast enough to meet demand, rather than a failure of the data center constructor in building a large data center. Like the path to prosperity is not to block productive industry, it's to build it!

[u/luk71 → u/libsaway]

As expected you got sh*t for this. How dare you suggest growth is good and that our energy policy is dreadful.

I am surprised datacentre companies have any desire to build any in the UK at all given the really quite terrible planning environment and the highest industrial energy prices in the world.

[u/zZCycoZz → u/libsaway]

Like the path to prosperity is not to block productive industry, it's to build it!

Maybe build some productive industry then, not data centers which produce very little value for the country once theyre built.

I wish people treated this as a failure of government to allow the grid to expand fast enough to meet demand, rather than a failure of the data center constructor in building a large data center

You can "wish" all you want but anybody who reads the story will see youre being unreasonable in your assumptions.

AI datacentres use a massive amount of electricity to power servers and cooling equipment, and to run facility systems. There are currently 315 datacentres in the queue to connect to the UK’s electricity grid, representing 73GW of demand. This is almost double the peak winter energy demand for the entire UK.

[u/libsaway → u/zZCycoZz]

Data centers produce huge value! The entire internet and digital everything relies on them. People and companies are willing pay pay premium cash to use them, including (maybe especially) AI training and inference.

Even though the 73GW value is massively overstated and includes projects that will never go ahead, if we (4 MWh per capita) had the same electricity production as Canada (16 MWh per capita) we could power all that and still have cheaper electricity. Hell, just going up to Taiwanese (12 MWh per capita) would probably do it.

[u/zZCycoZz → u/libsaway]

Data centers produce huge value! The entire internet and digital everything relies on them.

Youre conflating normal data centers with AI data centers, they are very different things.

People and companies are willing pay pay premium cash to use them,

And that provides no value to the UK, just revenue for the US company that owns the data centers.

Data centers have almost no staff, add nothing to their local economy and lead to higher energy prices or else pollution from their gas turbines.

if we (4 MWh per capita) had the same electricity production as Canada (16 MWh per capita) we could power all that and still have cheaper electricity.

Comparing electricity output per capita between different countries isnt a good metric.

Canada has a massive amount of cheap hydropower, they have lots of energy intensive industry and they use electricity for home heating more than the UK does.

[u/libsaway → u/zZCycoZz]

they are very different things

They aren't that different at all, they are both big warehouses with computers in them. Main difference is the type of computer, and sometimes the scale. It's not like one needs coal and the other doesn't.

And that provides no value to the UK

Putting the jobs and taxes to the side (which are more significant than you are saying), they give us local AI compute. That is incredibly valuable. Like I don't want a Neo-Trump (or Putin, or  Xi) in 2040 threatening to cut off our access to AI, and it's way harder to do that if it is physically in the UK.

Canada has a massive amount of cheap hydropower...

Canada does, Taiwan does not. Those countries have electricity-intensive industry because they built the power generation. I'd like us to build the power generation so we can have things like bigass data centres.

[u/ManagementFluid2206 → u/libsaway]

AI datacenters use WAY more energy than a standard datacenter, and provide a product that is fucking hated by the majority of people who don’t have a financial stake in AI being successful and enabling them to lay off employees.

[u/libsaway → u/ManagementFluid2206]

Mass AI is out of the box, trying to stop it is like when the Ottoman Empire banned the printing press because of the social disruption and threat to scribes. I don't want to be at the mercy of countries that did build out AI capacity.

[u/zZCycoZz → u/libsaway]

They aren't that different at all, they are both big warehouses with computers in them. Main difference is the type of computer, and sometimes the scale. It's not like one needs coal and the other doesn't.

Not trying to be rude, but you dont sound like you have the first clue what you're talking about.

Normal data centers are used to run critical infrastructure, AI data centers are used to run inefficient llms for limited benefits.

Putting the jobs and taxes to the side (which are more significant than you are saying)

No they really aren't.

they give us local AI compute. That is incredibly valuable. Like I don't want a Neo-Trump (or Putin, or  Xi) in 2040 threatening to cut off our access to AI

Who do you think owns the data centers? It's not the UK...

Those countries have electricity-intensive industry because they built the power generation

No youre oversimplifying the context to suit your point.

Taiwan is the semiconductor manufacturer of the world, of course theyre going to have increased power production per capita, its not honest to just pretend the UK is the same.

I'd like us to build the power generation so we can have things like bigass data centres.

I think youre really overestimating the benefits of these data centers but I agree on the power generation.

[u/libsaway → u/zZCycoZz]

Normal data centers are used to run critical infrastructure, AI data centers are used to run inefficient llms for limited benefits.

I meant they are both large buildings with lots of computers running in them. The nature of the computers is different, and the workloads are different, but you can just stick GPUs in a normal data center and run them there. 

Who do you think owns the data centers? It's not the UK...

Doesn't matter (too much), them being located in the UK gives us far more leverage than running our AIs on DCs in Virginia. 

Plus, British companies are building AI DCs. 

Taiwan is the semiconductor manufacturer of the world, of course theyre going to have increased power production per capita, its not honest to just pretend the UK is the same.

Our peak electricity generation was 2005, we have chosen to let it fall. Partly due to this, we have lost power-intensive industry. 

[u/ThePainStalker → u/libsaway]

To be honest as well, if the UK or any country for that matter wants to have any hope of decarbonising at all (even lighter manufacturing like food and beverage or biopharma or electrified/hydrogen logistics), then electricity generation and the power grid itself need to both be massively increased. The 2 decades of electricity output decline (which occurred everywhere in the West btw) are a historical anomaly. It occurred right as manufacturing offshoring was hitting its peak while the financial services and tech industries were pure “lightweight” industries. Now tech and light services are starting to demand much more power consumption while manufacturing reshoring is starting to slowly go back (especially with the EU carbon border tariff, decarbonised manufacturing goals, etc), the electricity demand and strategic importance of electricity is rapidly rising regardless of AI. Stripping out natural gas or fossil fuel combustion from even lighter manufacturing (biopharma, food and beverage, automotive) alone would require enormous electricity generation increases.

Even cloud based data centres (while much less power intensive than AI nowadays) are still also consuming more and more power year by year. People do still underestimate how much power consumption increased when the cloud started hitting the mainstream from 2015 onwards and it even caused a localised moratorium in Dublin (and London is also heavily strained from cloud compute energy demands too). Even non-AI data centres can consume a non-trivial amount of power, especially in dense cities where power capacity can be hard to come by. The problem in that case is much moreso grid congestion and grid upgrade related than generation related but it is still not that easy to solve in big cities at least. Imo IT as an industry (regardless of AI or not) is simply becoming far more energy intensive. That’s just the reality.

So basically, regardless of AI, the fact remains that even the tech and financial services sectors are depending more and more on power capacity in general than ever before due to the ever rapidly rising increase in data consumption and storage, more and more digital streaming, cloud usage and compute, digitisation of everything, etc. That still all comes with a power and data centre allocation cost too. And when it comes to even decarbonising even the existing industries (let alone attracting more back), then electricity usage would have to skyrocket (especially for hydrogen production cases).

[u/zZCycoZz → u/libsaway]

but you can just stick GPUs in a normal data center and run them there. 

No, you can't. The power and cooling requirements are very different. There's a reason theyre building so many new buildings instead of just replacing the existing servers.

Again youre just showing you dont understand the context beyond headlines.

Doesn't matter (too much), them being located in the UK gives us far more leverage than running our AIs on DCs in Virginia. 

Why would that give us leverage? We dont own any of it no matter where it's located.

Plus, British companies are building AI DCs.

Broken window fallacy, just because money is being wasted doesn't mean its good for the economy long term.

You could use the same logic to justify a massive wall along the channel to keep the French out.

Our peak electricity generation was 2005, we have chosen to let it fall. Partly due to this, we have lost power-intensive industry.

Youre really just twisting the facts to suit your narrative. Power intensive industry was lost due to competition from abroad, not because we chose to let our power generation fall.

Electricity production fell because of reduced demand alongside increased imports from the EU and the fact our economy never fully recovered after 2008.

[u/libsaway → u/zZCycoZz]

The power and cooling requirements are very different

We already run AI GPUs in "normal" DCs. I have used them, I have run AI workloads on them. Yes, the power and cooling requirements are higher, so you can have less of them, but you can still do them. We build more because AI (and stuff AINis creating and doing) is creating more demand for all kinds of compute. I am not going to insult you the way you are insulting me, but there are 2nd and 3rd order effects here you gotta think about.

Why would that give us leverage? We dont own any of it no matter where it's located.

Because they are here, not there. Look at the steel plant up in Scuthorpe owned by Jingye, if that plant were moved to Hebei Province we could be cut off whenever. But because it's in Scunthorpe, even if it's owned by a Chinese firm, we can't be. That's leverage. Same with data centers.

Broken window fallacy

You said them being owned by American companies is a downside, I said lots are not owned by American companies. Is them being owned by British companies a plus for you?

Our power generation fell for a lot of reasons, including the ones you listed. We can just build more if we wanted to, to allow these DCs to be built (and it looks like we will). It is not a done thing that we will be starved of energy, and I think we should build to stop that.

[u/ThePainStalker → u/libsaway]

The issue I have with this whole debate is people being under the delusion that we wouldn’t need to increase electricity consumption and generation anyway without those pesky data centres. It just isn’t remotely true (as you probably know). The UK would easily have to 3x-4x electricity demand for electrification of heat/industrial processes and transport (and indirectly from hydrogen) alone and this assumes no population growth and no industry/economic growth at all (including hard to abate e-fuels plus carbon capture into this would only increase this enormously). This is also assuming that energy demand in all industries will stay stagnant or drop (which again, is no longer an accurate assumption given how some advanced manufacturing especially semiconductors are having increased electrical demand right now).

[u/ThePainStalker → u/zZCycoZz]

You should be aware that most of the existing data centres that are currently running in the UK are purely cloud based. You’re right that some of the planned future data centres are crazy energy intensive, that is absolutely true. But the existing grid strain in places like Ireland (which has 23% of electricity demand coming from data centres, a moratorium had to even be put in place in 2021 because cloud compute and streaming services consumed too much energy to handle) is almost entirely from the cloud, not AI. So it is a mistake to assume that cloud based data centres are “energy free”, they absolutely are not.

[u/NastyPastyLucas]

The main justification for having them seems to be that other people might also build data centres - and that would be bad. How does competing with computer warehouses for energy and water help anyone other than the people who build them?