A “hyperscale” datacentre in outer London would generate more than 1m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to planning documents for the East Havering Data Centre Campus in North Ockendon. The project would use 218 hectares of green belt to run servers and data storage systems for AI and cloud computing, and if approved by Havering council it would be one of the largest datacentres in Europe. The paperwork is doing the talking here. Digital Reef wants the land, the power and the planning permission; everyone else gets the emissions, the grid strain and the bill.
Brussels-style growth logic, local sacrifice
Digital Reef has described the scheme as “a unique opportunity to create a sustainable datacentre campus of the future”. The company’s own planning application says something rather less glossy: the £14.7bn project “does not align with a science-based 1.5C compatible trajectory and achieving net zero by 2050”. That’s the clean version of the story. The dirty version is in the numbers. The documents estimate the development would generate more than 72m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over its projected 60-year lifespan, or 1.2m tonnes annually once fully operational.
Guardian analysis of planning documents for the dozens of proposed datacentres in the UK says the East Havering Data Centre Campus has the highest projected carbon emissions disclosed by a developer. Donald Campbell, advocacy director at the tech justice nonprofit Foxglove, called the projected emissions “staggering”. “It’s a big threat to the ability to decarbonise in the UK,” he said. “It’s also going to be a big drain on important resources that are needed by homes and other businesses.”
The scale of the electricity demand makes the whole thing even more blunt. According to Ofgem, the average UK household electricity consumption is 2,500 kWh per year. Digital Reef said in its proposal that at a “likely” 50% load, the campus would consume 2.65bn kWh per year of electricity, equivalent to the demand of more than 1m UK households. One campus. More than 1m households’ worth of power. That’s not a side effect. That’s the operating model.
The grid bends for capital
The campus would be powered primarily by a huge 600MVA connection to the National Grid via the nearby Warley substation. Because the existing site does not have sufficient capacity, major upgrades are planned, including a new 400kV National Grid substation and a new 132kV UK Power Networks facility on adjacent land, with the full connection expected by 2033. The infrastructure expands around the project, not the other way round. The state and its grid operators make room; ordinary users are told to cope.
The 1.2m tonnes of CO₂e the EHDCC expects to emit would amount to 8,480 long-haul flights from London Heathrow to New York’s John F Kennedy international airport, according to the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization’s carbon calculator. That’s the scale of the damage, translated into something even the planners can’t hide behind.
North Ockendon Residents Association said the development would be a “massacre” of green belt land. “It’s crop-producing farmland, in an age when we are threatened by security, it’s the loss of wildlife habitats, and there’s the pollution cost, which everyone seems to brush under the carpet,” a group spokesperson said. The people living beside the scheme are left naming what the glossy brochures erase.
Critical infrastructure for whom?
The scale of datacentre emissions raises questions over how Britain’s rapid expansion of AI infrastructure can be reconciled with the government’s legally binding climate targets. The government designated datacentres as “critical national infrastructure” in 2024, putting the tech developments on an equal footing with water, energy and emergency services systems. By early 2025, the government estimated datacentres used 2.5% of the UK’s electricity, but predicted this would increase fourfold by 2030. The state has already chosen its priorities. The servers get the badge of national necessity; the climate targets get the press release treatment.
In January, planning legislation was amended so datacentre developers were able to apply as nationally significant infrastructure projects, meaning they were able to largely bypass the local authority planning procedure and seek approval directly from government. Local control, such as it was, gets routed around when capital wants speed. The decision-making moves upward, away from the people who have to live with the consequences.
Neso, Britain’s grid operator, has warned MPs that datacentre developers have requested 72.8GW of electricity connections by 2039, a “huge step change for the sector” and nearly 60% more than the UK’s peak power demand last year, in a surge driven by the race to build AI and hyperscale infrastructure. The race is on. The public is expected to watch the grid buckle politely.
The government said last year the now disbanded department for science, innovation and technology would produce a national policy statement for the sector, but it has not yet been published. Campbell said: “The government needs to be taking concrete steps to make sure that the public and the environment aren’t left to carry the social environmental costs of the datacentres. These datacentres are ultimately going to be serving the wealthiest companies in the world – so they need to be required to carry that cost.”
By 2038, the EHDCC operational emissions alone are projected to consume nearly 20 times the entire carbon budget of the borough of Havering and almost 1% of the UK’s entire carbon budget. Planning documents said that where the zero-carbon target cannot be met on site, “any shortfall would be provided through a cash in lieu contribution to the borough’s carbon offset fund”. The developer estimates that payment at about £77.6m. Carbon, in other words, can be priced, offset and shuffled around on paper while the machines keep humming.
Campbell said datacentre developers should at a minimum be required to build enough additional renewable generation and storage to supply their facilities. “That’s the only way of really ensuring that it’s not going to add to carbon emissions,” he said. “They shouldn’t just plug into the grid and drain the power that everyone else needs.” The first round of consultation on the EHDCC closed in April. A revised proposal reflecting any accepted changes is expected to be published for a further public consultation in the autumn. Councillor Keith Prince, Reform UK leader of Havering council, said that as a decision on EHDCC is made by the local planning authority, it would be “wrong” to comment until that decision was made. Digital Reef did not respond to request for comment. The machine keeps moving. The consultation keeps circling. The green belt waits.