As data center industry booms, an English village becomes a battleground

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ABBOTS LANGLEY, England (AP) — Originally built to store peasant farmers’ crops, the Tithe Barn on the edge of the English village of Abbots Langley has been converted into homes that preserve centuries of their history. Now, its residents are fighting to stop the development next door that represents the future.

A proposal to build a data center in a field across the road has been rejected by local authorities amid strong opposition from villagers. But it is getting a second chance from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government, which is seeking reforms to boost economic growth in the wake of Labour’s election victory in July.

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Residents of Abbots Langley, 18 miles (30 kilometers) northwest of London, are concerned that the facility will drain local resources and create noise and traffic that damage the character of the quiet village, which is home to just over 20,000 people. Just off the main street is a church with a stone tower built in the 12th century, and further down the road, there is a picturesque circular courtyard made up of thatched-roof cottages that were once a hacienda-style estate built for the French Queen Marie Antoinette.

“It’s completely inappropriate,” said Stuart Lewis, 70, who lives in one of the 600-year-old converted houses in Teith Barn. “I think any reasonable person anywhere would say, ‘Wait, they want a data center? This isn’t the place for it.'”

As the AI ​​boom fuels demand for cloud computing from server farms around the world, such projects pit commercial considerations, national priorities and local interests against each other.

British Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner has stepped in to review appeals from developers of three data center projects after they were rejected by local authorities, taking the decision out of the hands of town planners. These proposals include Abbots Langley and two projects in Buckinghamshire, which lies west of London. The first decision is expected by January.

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These projects are controversial because the data centers will be built on “Green Belt” land, which has been designated to prevent urbanization. Rayner wants to exploit the green belt for development, saying much of it is of low quality. For example, one proposed project in Buckinghamshire involves redeveloping an industrial park next to a busy motorway.

“Although it is officially designated Green Belt land, there is nothing green on the site today,” said Stephen Baird, global head of data centers at Knight Frank, a real estate consultancy working on the project.

“It’s actually an eyesore and is very prominent from the M25,” he said.

Greystoke, the company behind the Abbots Langley Center and the second Buckinghamshire project to be built on a former landfill, did not respond to requests for comment. In an online video for Abbots Langley, a company representative says: “We did an extensive search for locations, and this one is by far the best.” He did not specify which companies would likely use the center.

The British government is making data centers a key component of economic growth plans, deeming them “critical national infrastructure” to give businesses the confidence to invest in them. Starmer announced deals for new centres, including a £10 billion ($13 billion) investment from private equity firm Blackstone to build what will be Europe’s largest artificial intelligence data center in northeast England.

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The land for the Abbots Langley data center is currently used for horse grazing. It is bordered on the other two sides by a cluster of affordable housing and the highway.

Greystoke’s plans to build two large buildings totaling 84,000 square meters (90,400 sq ft) and reaching 20 meters (66 ft) in height have alarmed Lewis and other villagers, who worry that they will dwarf everything else nearby.

They also question Greystoke’s promise that it will create up to 260 jobs.

“Everything will be automated, so they won’t need people,” said technology consultant Jennifer Stirrup, 51, who lives in the area.

Not everyone in the village is against this.

Retiree Brian Power says he would welcome the data center, believing it would benefit the area in a similar way to another large project on the other side of the village, a Warner Bros. project. Studio tour featuring the Harry Potter exhibit.

“It’ll bring some jobs, whatever. It’ll be good. Yeah. No problem. If he doesn’t come, he’ll go somewhere else,” said Bauer, 56.

One of the biggest concerns about data centers is their environmental impact, especially the massive amounts of electricity they require. Greystoke says the facility will attract 96MW of “IT loads”. But James Felstead, director of a renewable energy company and a neighbor of Lewis, said the region’s power grid would not be able to handle that much additional demand.

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It’s a problem mirrored across Europe, where power demand in data centers is expected to triple by the end of the decade, according to consultancy McKinsey. While the AI-fueled data boom has prompted Google, Amazon and Microsoft to look to nuclear power as a source of clean energy, concerns about its environmental footprint have already raised tensions over data centers elsewhere.

Last September, Google was forced to halt its plans to establish a $200 million data center in the Chilean capital, Santiago, after complaints from the community about its potential use of water and energy.

In Ireland, where many Silicon Valley companies have European headquarters, the grid operator has paused new data centers around Dublin until 2028 over concerns about consuming too much electricity.

A massive data center project in Northern Virginia narrowly won county approval last year, amid intense opposition from residents concerned about its environmental impact. Other places like Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Singapore have imposed various restrictions on data centers.

Public knowledge of the industry is still low, but “people are more aware that these data centers are a big problem,” said Sebastian Lehuidi, a lecturer in ethics, artificial intelligence and society at King’s College London, who has studied the case of Google in Chile.

As awareness about its environmental impact grows, “I’m sure we will face more opposition from different communities,” Lihuidi said.

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