Latest news with #datacentre
The Guardian
4 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Planned AI datacentre in England could cause five times emissions of big airport
A vast new datacentre to feed Britain's rising demand for artificial intelligence could cause more greenhouse gas emissions than five international airports. Elsham datacentre in Lincolnshire is on course to cost £10bn and its 15 power-hungry computer warehouses are projected to release five times the carbon dioxide of Birmingham airport, including from take-offs and landings. A planning application for the facility nine miles east of Scunthorpe was submitted last month and a public consultation closes in three weeks. Documents estimate the datacentre would consume 3.7bn kWh of energy, with annual CO2 emissions of 857,254 tonnes when running at full tilt. This is based on the current mix of energy sources powering the National Grid. The datacentre will also create so much excess heat that glasshouses are being proposed with capacity to produce more than 10 tonnes of tomatoes a day. Global tech firms are struggling to meet their carbon-cutting goals. By 2030, carbon dioxide emissions from AI datacentres will be six times the 2023 level, according to research by the Öko-Institut in Germany. Greenpeace has called for commensurate renewable energy capacity to be added to national grids at the same time as new datacentres are built. Microsoft recently admitted that five years after it committed to becoming zero carbon by 2030, its total emissions had risen by 23% due to factors including AI expansion. This week Meta signed a 20-year deal with a nuclear power station in Illinois, while Amazon and Google are also investing in nuclear energy to fuel the race for AI dominance. Datacentres are needed to train AI models and run AI searches, which are now routinely offered to billions of people by Google and Meta and which require four to five times more computing power, according to estimates. Climate experts believe AI could help the fight against global warming by making power grids work more efficiently or accelerating the development of new zero-carbon technologies. Martha Dark, a co-executive director of Foxglove, a non-profit organisation based in London campaigning for 'a fairer tech future', said the Elsham planning application put two key UK government missions on collision course. 'The prime minister has talked up datacentres powering generative AI as the magic beans to miraculously sprout Britain's withered economy into life but also made a promise at the election to get toxic pollution out of our air and deliver net zero by 2050,' she said. 'It's decision time: does the government want an economic plan that's best for Britain, or one that's best for Amazon, Google and Meta?' Planning documents state: 'Elsham Tech Park Ltd will endeavour to purchase green power for the facility, where possible.' The backers believe CO2 emissions could be lower than the 850,000 tonnes a year figure if the National Grid becomes greener by the time the datacentre is due to be switched on in 2029. The developer has ruled out on-site renewables as impractical. If the system ran on biomass energy it would require the daily delivery of 100 large lorry loads of wood chips. Wind energy would require 10,000 20-metre wind turbines, while an area five times the size of the Glastonbury festival site would be needed if it were to be powered by photovoltaic panels. Sign up to Down to Earth The planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essential after newsletter promotion A government spokesperson said it was 'alert to the power demands which will drive AI development' and it would use 'responsible, sustainable sources', with advanced modular reactors, which create nuclear power, playing 'a particularly important role'. 'We're shaking up the planning rules to make it easier to build nuclear power stations across the country,' the spokesperson said. Peter Kyle, the secretary of state for science and technology, has called datacentres 'the engines of the AI age', and the government has said it is targeting a 'rapid build-out' to boost the UK's capacity for building and running AI models. Last month the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, overruled a local council that had rejected a plan for a £1bn datacentre at Abbots Langley in Hertfordshire, citing the 'clear and pressing need for new datacentre capacity'. Robert Waltham, the leader of North Lincolnshire council, which covers Elsham, said: 'You have to be aware of the management of resources but we also have to have significant investment in the UK, and AI is contributing to health and supporting the most vulnerable people. This is not just about Google search – AI is improving medical science and our productivity.' He cited the example of how the council was deploying AI chatbots to help older people stay on top of their medicines, enabling them to stay at home longer rather than moving into residential care. A spokesperson for Greystoke, which owns Elsham Tech Park Ltd, said the project would create 900 jobs. 'The region is an ideal location for AI datacentres due to the significant investment already made in developing the UK's most advanced clean energy cluster,' they said. 'It has access to a third of the UK's offshore wind energy as well as access to 66% of the UK's licensed carbon capture and storage.'
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Brookfield Asset Management plans $10 billion data centre for AI in Sweden
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) plans to invest up to 95 billion Swedish crowns ($9.91 billion) to build a data centre for artificial intelligence in Sweden, the Canadian company said in a statement on Wednesday. BAM said the site in the Swedish city of Strangnas west of Stockholm will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs and around 2,000 jobs during a 10-15 year construction process. "This investment represents one of Brookfield's largest AI investments in Europe and extends the partnership with the Swedish government, its public authorities, academia and businesses in the region," the company said in the statement. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson welcomed the announcement, he said on social media X. U.S. tech group Nvidia last month announced that it will provide its latest generation AI data centre platform to a group of Swedish companies, including telecoms gear maker Ericsson and drug developer AstraZeneca. ($1 = 9.5845 Swedish crowns) Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Zawya
6 days ago
- Business
- Zawya
Brookfield Asset Management plans $10bln data centre for AI in Sweden
STOCKHOLM - Brookfield Asset Management (BAM) plans to invest up to 95 billion Swedish crowns ($9.91 billion) to build a data centre for artificial intelligence in Sweden, the Canadian company said in a statement on Wednesday. BAM said the site in the Swedish city of Strangnas west of Stockholm will create more than 1,000 permanent jobs and around 2,000 jobs during a 10-15 year construction process. "This investment represents one of Brookfield's largest AI investments in Europe and extends the partnership with the Swedish government, its public authorities, academia and businesses in the region," the company said in the statement. Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson welcomed the announcement, he said on social media X. U.S. tech group Nvidia last month announced that it will provide its latest generation AI data centre platform to a group of Swedish companies, including telecoms gear maker Ericsson and drug developer AstraZeneca. ($1 = 9.5845 Swedish crowns)
The Guardian
22-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
Draining cities dry: the giant tech companies queueing up to build datacentres in drought-hit Latin America
It is a warehouse the size of 12 football pitches that promises to create much-needed jobs and development in Caucaia city, north-east Brazil. But it won't have shelves stocked with products. This vast building will be a datacentre, believed to be earmarked for TikTok, the Chinese-owned video-sharing app, as part of a 55bn reais (£7.3bn) project to expand its global datacentre infrastructure. As the demand for supercomputer facilities rises, fuelled by the AI boom, Brazil is attracting more and more tech companies. The choice of Caucaia is no accident. Several undersea cables carry data from the nearby capital of Ceará state, Fortaleza, to other continents. The closer to the cables, the greater the traffic capacity and the lower the latency, or response time, between two points on the internet network. Caucaia also has Pecém EPZ, a zone in which companies can produce goods and services for export with a range of tax benefits and simplified bureaucratic procedures. Yet Caucaia also suffers from extreme weather events, including droughts and heavy rains, according to data from the Digital Atlas of Disasters in Brazil and the Integrated Disaster Information System. In 16 of the 21 years between 2003 and 2024, a state of emergency due to drought was declared in the city at least once. In 2019, almost 10,000 people were affected by water shortages, the Digital Atlas of Disasters shows. As reservoirs were depleted, the water became unfit for consumption, leading to crop losses and difficulty accessing basic food for the population. Datacentres use vast amounts of energy and water to cool their supercomputers. Nevertheless, public authorities are greenlighting their construction in cities that have persistently suffered from drought. Caucaia is not an isolated case. According to the Digital Disaster Atlas, five of the 22 datacentres planned are located in cities that have suffered recurring droughts and water shortages since 2003. So far, the Chinese social network has not been named in the permit applications in Caucaia. But in February, the state government's chief of staff, Chagas Vieira, confirmed in an interview with a local radio station that it was in talks with a Chinese company, and representatives from TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have met senior government officials, including the vice-president and the development, industry, trade and services minister Geraldo Alckmin. ByteDance has been approached for comment. The company officially responsible for the project is Casa dos Ventos, a Brazilian wind energy provider that has invested in the datacentre sector. The company's founder and president, Mario Araripe, announced last year that he aimed to attract a large global tech company, such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta or Microsoft, to fill the place with its computers. Casa dos Ventos has already obtained one of the three necessary licences needed from the state of Ceará. According to the State Environmental Superintendence (Semace), the project received a licence for 'water consumption of 30m³/day in a closed circuit, supplied by an artesian well'. Access to further details has been refused due to commercial confidentiality. Casa dos Ventos says it is 'committed to transforming Porto do Pecém into a technology innovation and energy transition complex' with 'the largest datacentre and green hydrogen project in the country, which will use renewable energy'. Projects that require substantial power, such as datacentres, must apply for special permission from the Brazilian government to operate. In 2024, at least seven of the 21 authorisations published by the ministry of mines and energy were related to datacentres. Casa dos Ventos is also responsible for another project for a datacentre under state review in Campo Redondo, Rio Grande do Norte, which has experienced drought for 14 of the last 21 years, analysis of data from the Digital Disaster Atlas shows. During a water shortage in 2022, the municipality requested federal support and water trucks were dispatched to meet demand. A similar situation has occurred in Igaporã, Bahia, where a Brazilian renewables energy company, plans to build two datacentres. The city has declared a state of emergency due to drought and dry spells in 12 of the 22 years since 2003. In 2021, about 5,500 people were affected by water shortages in rural areas. There is no transparency on water consumption by datacentres under construction in these cities. Companies do not publish this information voluntarily, and the government refuses to release technical documentation for licensing, citing industrial secrecy. In early April, the National Electricity System Operator (ONS) rejected Casa dos Ventos's request for access to the grid, citing risks to grid stability. The ministry of mines and energy then asked for the calculations to be redone to explore possible grid adjustments. Big tech companies admit that they are consuming water in sensitive areas due to the demands of AI. In its 2024 sustainability report, Microsoft said that 42% of its water came from areas of 'water stress', and Google said the same year that 15% of its water use was in areas of 'high water scarcity'. The large amounts of water used by datacentres keep computers and machines cool, preventing them from overheating. However, some is lost to evaporation, which can exacerbate the climate crisis in the regions where they are set up. As AI models improve, they need more processing power, which requires more energy and cooling. This means water and energy consumption are set to increase. The International Energy Agency conservatively estimates that datacentre energy consumption will double to 945,000 GWh by 2030 – the equivalent of Japan's annual energy consumption. Emerging countries such as Brazil will account for about 5% of the projected growth over this period. Water consumption is set to rise significantly, with 4.2bn to 6.6bn cubic metres needed for global AI demand in 2027, according to researchers at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Texas at Arlington. This is more than half of the UK's annual water consumption. However, according to Shaolei Ren, a researcher at UC Riverside and co-author of the article, there is an essential difference between withdrawal (the water taken out of the system) and consumption (water withdrawal that evaporates) regarding datacentres. Sign up to Global Dispatch Get a different world view with a roundup of the best news, features and pictures, curated by our global development team after newsletter promotion 'While residential users typically don't use much of the water they withdraw, datacentres often use 60% to 80% of it,' says Ren. In other words, the water is lost. Datacentres can be cooled in two ways. One is air conditioning, a power-inefficient solution for extensive facilities. Water is the second option. One technique is to use radiators with fans in a closed water circuit, where the water is recycled or reused, similar to the system in a car engine, but costs are high. Another option is cooling towers, which remove heat from hot water using evaporation, so the cold water can be pumped back into the system. The last method involves spraying water into the air to make it more humid and lower the temperature. But there are still some inefficiencies. 'Both evaporation and spraying result in water loss,' says Emilio Francesquini, an associate professor at the Federal University of ABC. A small datacentre with a 1MW capacity consumes 25.5m litres of water yearly, losing 1% (255,000 litres) via evaporation. In Pecém, alternatives to water extraction would be seawater desalination or the purchase of recycled water from Fortaleza, says Francisco Assis de Souza Filho, a professor at the Federal University of Ceará. He says it is up to the state government, as part of the environmental licensing process, to grant a datacentre a water concession. Ronildo Mastroianni, a technical director at Esplar, an NGO that has worked in Ceará for 50 years, says a project that requires intensive water consumption in a semi-arid region does not make sense. 'A small push is all it takes to become arid,' he says. Mastroianni cautions that these projects could result in permanent watershed changes. He warns of a weakening caatinga – a fragile ecosystem – and growing food insecurity due to water shortages in rural areas. No representatives from local non-governmental organisations or the dozens of quilombola and Indigenous communities were invited to discuss the project, he says. Other Latin American countries have also experienced a datacentre industry boom. Chile has 22 datacentres, 16 located in the greater Santiago area. In December, the government announced a national plan for 30 new projects, as the country is expected to move from a medium to a high level of water stress by 2040, with the likelihood of a decrease in water availability. In Chile, the government and companies are facing a growing resistance. In 2019, Google announced plans for a second datacentre in Santiago, where the activist organisation Socio-Environmental Community Movement for Land and Water (Mosacat) estimated that the project would extract 7bn litres of water annually. After a series of demonstrations, a Santiago court reviewed the project. In early 2024, the court halted it pending Google's review of the environmental impact. One of those who took part in the fight to stop the project was Tania Rodríguez, a member of Mosacat. 'It's turned into extractivism,' she said in an interview with Rest of World. 'We end up being everybody's back yard.' This article was written in partnership with The Intercept Brasil and in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center's AI Accountability Network. Read it in Portuguese here
BBC News
21-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Northumberland data centre construction timeline revealed
The timeline for delivery of a £10bn artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing data centre has been published as part of new planning applications for the site at Cambois, near Blyth, in Northumberland, from US firm QTS say the first phase of so-called enabling works has a target start date of late on the first phase of the data centres themselves is set to begin next year.A further four phases are slated to follow, with the final one completed in 2035. Those timescales are subject to securing future planning permissions, documents sayBy the time it is completed, the site will total up to 540,000 sq m (5,812,512 sq km) of internal space, as well as the likes of substations and other associated permission for the facility, which will include 10 buildings, was granted in first phase of the project covers the south and south-western portion of the former Blyth Power Station of that stage alone is not expected to be completed until 2029, the Local Democracy Reporting Service is a data subsidiary of investment giant has previously said the development would create more than 1,600 jobs, including 1,200 long-term construction addition, it was estimated a further 2,700 jobs would be created across the wider local site had previously been home to Britishvolt, which had intended to build a £3.8bn battery factory for the electric car the company collapsed in 2023 leading to the loss of more than 200 jobs. Follow BBC North East on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
