Bikers and Bug-Lovers Join Forces to Fight a New Google Data Center

On Wednesday afternoon, Jamie Robins strolled up to the entrance of Google’s UK headquarters in Kings Cross, London. He brandished a letter containing details of a petition signed by almost 55,000 people, calling for Google to abandon plans to build a large new data center in Thurrock, 15 miles to the east of London.

Robins works for wildlife conservation trust Buglife, part of an unlikely alliance of special-interest groups trying to block the Thurrock development. Buglife and local wildlife groups fear for an endangered plant, rare bumblebee, and other invertebrates whose habitat they say will be destroyed. Nonprofit Foxglove says the data center will emit too much pollution. The Thurrock Hammers motorcycle club wants to return to racing on the site.

Members of the various groups joined Robins outside Google’s office last Wednesday, holding placards demanding the company “search elsewhere” for somewhere to put its facility.

Across the UK, companies like Google are preparing to build industrial-scale data centers, part of a scramble to meet the swelling demand for the compute needed to run artificial intelligence models and other digital services. The UK government is eager to encourage them, hoping to capture a share of the hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into the AI industry and minimize the country’s dependence on foreign partners for compute. But like in the US, people living near to the proposed developments are making their objections known and trying to gum up the works.

“There’s local campaign groups against data centers popping up every week,” says Robins. “People are angry about data centers turning up in their back gardens. They’re angry about data centers flouting local opinion—and about the impact it has on wildlife.”

“These planning campaigns can go on for years,” says Robins. “It’s a war of attrition.”