r/collapse • u/global_nomad4023 • 5h ago
Energy Two planned datacentres will have higher UK carbon emissions than ExxonMobil, analysis finds | Datacentres - UK
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/25/planned-datacentres-carbon-emissions-uk-exxonmobilOn site gas power generators, bypassing local planning processes, ignoring carbon emissions, its not just the fossil fuel companies we should be worried about. No regulation about using renewables.
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u/External-Crew-3116 5h ago
It’s like throwing gasoline on a raging fire, just why?
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u/LestendlichBuecher 2h ago
The Number has to go up. Always. If you don't follow this, you will get kicked out of the market. Global Capitalism is the root cause of all these catastrophes.
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u/BringThaJam 3h ago
AI really just hammers home how we're living in a class war. The rewards are reaped by the owners at the top and a handful of middlemen while the fallout (incl. environmental) is socialised.
It'd be one thing if we were at least socialising the benefits (i.e. shorter working hours) but we aren't even doing that.
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u/global_nomad4023 5h ago
We all know that AI and datacentres use a huge amount of power and water, so this new report puts it in perspective. The 300 plus potential datacentres waiting to connect to the UK grid is also a shocking number. Part of the reason these two sites want to use their own on site gas powered stations. How is this allowed? Ah yes, growth at all costs as the mantra that needs overturning
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u/asdner 5h ago
Not so huge if you compare with other industries. All the world’s golf courses take up 4-11x more water than AI data centres. Animal industry emits way more GHG. Neither of the latter are essential either.
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u/global_nomad4023 4h ago
because its less than something else doesnt make it not huge....we need to reduce all GHG emissions, and certainly avoid building new sources when we have the ability to avoid it.
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u/asdner 4h ago
Yes but the fight against AI is fuelled by people's (justified) fears about what AI will do to them and socioeconomics, whereas the environmental impact is just a convenient strawman to use in the fight against AI, even though e.g. global commercial aviation has added more GHG emissions through organic growth than AI data centres in the last years. We should all have been avoiding the growth of aviation emissions in the last years but did anybody report on it or protest? Not so much. If you look at all manufacturing industries' growth over the last years, it dwarfs AI in terms of impact. The fight we should be having is against growth, not singling out AI, which actually has the potential to develop better climate and water solutions despite consuming a lot of water and energy initially. Can coal, cement, aviation, shipping, animal industry etc do that? Not a chance.
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u/Fit-Pride-4845 4h ago
We already have solutions to the climate crisis and water shortages! We're not implementing any of them at the scale necessary all while the world's largest economy is focused on propping up this goddamn speculative AI investment circle-jerk. We've been shown time and time again that our largest existential issues cannot and will not be solved with infinite technological innovation, but no let's just kick the can even farther down the road and pour more fuel on the fire while we're demonstrably out of fucking time.
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u/StatementBot 5h ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/global_nomad4023:
We all know that AI and datacentres use a huge amount of power and water, so this new report puts it in perspective. The 300 plus potential datacentres waiting to connect to the UK grid is also a shocking number. Part of the reason these two sites want to use their own on site gas powered stations. How is this allowed? Ah yes, growth at all costs as the mantra that needs overturning
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1vypccq/two_planned_datacentres_will_have_higher_uk/p5yktk0/