The AI power grab nobody voted for: recapping our London Climate Action Week panel
Two weeks ago, as part of London Climate Action Week, Foxglove brought together lawyers, campaigners, communities impacted by data centres and economists at x+why Fivefields in London to ask a question that’s becoming impossible to ignore: are Big Tech and AI hyperscale data centres powering a fairer future, or costing the earth?
New hyperscale data centres are set to be one of the biggest drivers of global electricity demand growth in the years ahead. Governments are being sold a familiar pitch — jobs, growth, economic revival. But the reality taking shape is murkier. Tech giants are quietly rolling back their climate commitments and turning to new fossil fuel capacity to keep their facilities running. Net zero targets are being undermined. Water supplies are being degraded. Communities are being displaced. Even data centres marketed as “green” can end up siphoning renewable energy away from the transition it was supposed to serve.
And through it all, one question keeps going unanswered: who actually benefits, beyond the world’s wealthiest tech companies?
Our panel brought together the people best placed to interrogate that — people fighting these battles alongside Foxglove in court and in communities — to talk through what AI infrastructure growth within planetary boundaries could genuinely look like, what regulation would need to do to get us there, and whether governments and regulators are moving fast enough.
Where this fits into Foxglove’s work
This isn’t a new fight for us. Foxglove brought and won the UK’s first legal case challenging a hyperscale data centre for the government’s failure to properly assess its environmental impact. We’ve also, together with partners filed legal objections to a hyperscale data centre development in Cape Town, South Africa, for its failure to provide information on its use of resources, such as water and energy.
Beyond the legal cases, we’ve worked to put the environmental costs of this infrastructure boom in the public eye — from the strain data centres place on local water supplies, to the misleading claims made by Big Tech over their environmental impact, to exposing how badly officials have underestimated the true carbon impact of UK data centres.
The panel was a chance to zoom out from any single case and connect the dots: the same pattern — costs paid by communities, benefits received by private companies, scrutiny arriving late — is showing up wherever hyperscale data centres are being built. We have much more work in the pipeline – please keep your eyes on our mailing list for updates on the legal objections we’ve filed over plans for hyperscalers in the UK and South Africa.
So many Foxglove supporters joined us for the event in person and it was wonderful to meet you – none of our work is possible without your support. If you missed the event, you can watch the recording here: https://www.foxglove.org.uk/data-centres-powering-ai-or-costing-the-earth/