As AI guzzles water and energy, we are already facing a choice: datacentres or homes?

Amid headlines about the UK’s drought, Europe’s wildfires and impossible global temperatures, it was 28C when I arrived in Slough last Monday. I was there to look around Slough Trading Estate, a place that might once have conjured up images of the TV comedy.

In many people’s minds, datacentres are also a byword for the two totemic issues of yet another searing summer: heat and water. Across the world, the huge amounts of electricity they demand, mostly generated using fossil fuels, indelibly connects them to the climate emergency.

What Happened

The constant machinations of their crammed-in servers require cooling processes that also use vast amounts of water. So it is that the 21st century’s dominant means of communication intensifies our era’s most terrifying threats.

• Green datacentres are attracting growing interest, but many insiders insist that renewables simply don’t cut it: “Our datacentres have to run 100% of the time so we can’t even consider using [renewables] as a.

• For all Andy Burnham’s talk of local decision-making, Whitehall’s official aim is still to triple the UK’s number of datacentres by 2030, which could be aided by the fact that they are now classed.

• There may, in fact, be a stark choice lurking in such stories that politicians will soon have to face: homes or servers?

Key Details

The first building I loitered around was a datacentre owned by the California-based company Equinix. There were 100 or so cars in its “visitor” and “staff” spaces, no corporate branding to be seen – and, up close, the constant sound of a.

• Whatever that represents, it doesn’t sound like what the new PM calls “good growth in every postcode”.

• It will include a datacentre handling transactions in the City, offices and 44 homes, in contrast to plans supported by the local council centred on 350 new dwellings.

• All sorts of tensions could soon explode.

Why It Matters

On the other side of the street, poetically enough, was a set of offices occupied by Thames Water, a few of whose employees were taking a break outside. I pointed across the road: did they know what the building contained?

• US sites are putting added pressure on existing power grids that also use coal and oil, and backup generators powered by diesel are a standard industry feature.

• Increasing numbers of US facilities have their own dedicated gas turbines; in the UK, high-ups at the energy regulator Ofgem say that 100 planned centres here aim to do the same.

What Reports Say

Coverage of the story so far points to:

• Continued reporting by The Guardian as more details emerge