The forward march of data centres halted?

Their environmental impact is making headlines – which is inconvenient for a  Government seemingly committed to giving them the go-ahead, argues Victor Anderson.

The Government chose Budget Day to issue two documents about data centres. One, principally for public consumption, is a proposed “covenant” between government and the tech companies. The other, with far more legal force, as it acts through the planning system, is a draft National Policy Statement.

The proposed “covenant” is full of aspirations for how well-behaved data centres ought to be – in terms of efficient use of energy and water, benefits for the local community, and so on – but very weak on implementation and enforcement. The covenant is presented as a proposed deal between the Government and the data centre developers.

On their side, the Government is prepared to promise a lot of value to the developers. This will include using “new powers in the Planning and Infrastructure Act to prioritise strategically important demand projects, including data centres, by reserving future capacity and reallocating capacity released when other projects leave the connections queue.”

So data centres would get priority for grid connections over, for example, other businesses and new housing developments. The National Grid was left in a poor state by the Tories, with long waiting lists for connections in some parts of the country. It doesn’t necessarily have capacity for all projects and developments that want to connect. Priority for data centres may mean no connection, or long waits, for other developments, including for some of the new housing the Government says it wants.

Even with priority, however, the Government recognises the Grid may not be in good enough shape to provide data centre connections. It therefore suggests it will “enable access to temporary power to bridge the gap to grid connections.” In other words, data centres may house their own electricity generation. But what will that do to carbon emissions? Will it just use up renewable energy that could otherwise be used to replace fossil fuels?

The proposed covenant is thoroughly ambiguous in terms of what is required from the data centre developers and who the covenant would be between. Section 5 of the document refers twice to “these tests”, but it is not clear what the tests actually are. We are told what the Government’s areas of concern are, but not the actual tests, that is, with targets and timetables.

Who would be the parties to the covenant? “In return for meeting these tests…”, the Government offers its side of the bargain. But the tests (whatever they are) would be met or not met by specific developments or developers, whereas the Government promises look like they refer to the whole industry. Does the industry get together collectively and sign the covenant? Does the Government refuse planning permission for those developers which have not signed the covenant? The document doesn’t actually say that, and its language about data centres is generally so positive, that the implication is that bargaining will take place between government and developers who don’t quite match up to “the tests” but nevertheless offer a big “strategic” development. And what does that do to the firms that have met the tests at some expense to themselves?

There must also be concern about who is going to make the decisions about the siting of data centres. The recent Planning and Infrastructure Act put the larger ones in the category of “nationally significant infrastructure”,  which takes them out of the hands of local authorities and gives the decisions to the Secretary of State, advised by the professional Planning Inspectorate.

The Inspectorate is guided very much by government policy and its expression in legal documents. Planning disputes usually involve finding a route through a thicket of different policies, local and national, often pointing in different directions, so the Inspectorate operates with a sense of what takes priority over what. Very close to the top of the hierarchy, just below actual specific legislation, are the National Policy Statements (NPSs), which are issued by the Government under powers they were given by the Planning Act 2008. These documents already govern policies on, for example, roads, railways, and airports. Now they are going to be joined by a NPS on data centres.

The language of the NPS is generally very positive. Decisions should be made on the basis of “support for building essential infrastructure… to meet the needs of a modern economy.” Paragraph 81 is clear: “Reflecting the need for further growth of data centre capacity in England, the Secretary of State should start with a presumption of consent when deciding applications in accordance with this NPS.”

It is difficult, on the basis of the NPS, to see how any application for permission to build a large data centre could ever be turned down. There is a loophole though. According to paragraph 30, there could be a refusal if going ahead meant that “The UK would be in breach of any of its international obligations”. It all depends what you mean by “obligations”, but clearly a major increase in the UK’s carbon emissions would put it in breach of the speeches, promises and declarations UK governments have made on the international stage at climate conferences and the like.

The Treasury always has a trick up its sleeve when counting carbon emissions. It is contrary to the Climate Change Act 2008 to exceed the level of total emissions set out in the most recent Carbon Budget. But of course no individual project does go above that level, so it can always be claimed that any particular project is compatible with the Act. The project could go ahead and emissions reductions take place in other parts of the economy in order to make room for it. This is the logic used for saying the expansion of Heathrow Airport can happen, and there’s no doubt the same argument will be put forward for the expansion of data centres.

This draft NPS is now open for public consultation and scrutiny by Parliament. Parliament has up until February 17th to decide what to do. The Government may be persuaded on relatively minor points, but it will take a major campaign to shift the basic nature of this NPS and halt the effectively uncontrolled spread of data centres.

The problem of the environmental impacts of large data centres has appeared at a very inconvenient time. Climate change is no longer only a matter of scientific forecasting, but is plainly evident to anyone but the most deliberately ignorant. At just the time when the need to restrain carbon emissions is at its most obvious, a technology has now arrived with an enormous appetite for causing increased emissions and counteracting all the good and well-meaning polices devised to reduce them. 

In September, a majority in the Scottish Parliament voted in favour of a Scottish Labour motion to pause planning applications for all new AI data centres for up to a year while the Scottish Government develops its own strategy, likely to be at odds with the one being produced in England. In November in the USA, the siting of large data centres was a key issue in shifting votes in the mid-term elections. In India, South Korea, and across Europe, opposition is growing.

Victor Anderson was a Green Party member of the London Assembly, is now retired, and is still making trouble.

Image: Data Centre under construction https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Data_Centre_under_construction_-_geograph.org.uk_-_4040245.jpg Source: Geograph Britain and Ireland Author: Hugh Venables, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.