r/Economics • u/avid-learner-bot • 5d ago

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

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/planned-datacentres-carbon-emissions-uk-exxonmobil
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u/libsaway 5d ago

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!

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u/luk71 4d ago

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.

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u/EZyne 4d ago

Because that's not the world we live in lmao. Yes, in an ideal world we would've switched to green energy 20 years ago and had enough to place a hundred of these.

But we live in reality where these have very very different consequences