The Real Cost of Artificial Intelligence: Energy, Land and Local Resistance

June 1, 2026

The digital sector's energy demands are growing fast. As consumer culture accelerates and people turn to AI for everyday tasks, the environmental cost of our digital lives is quietly compounding. A single ChatGPT query uses 50 to 90 times the energy of a Google search. Today's data centres are processing more than 16 times the data they were in 2010, yet there has been no significant progress in reducing the toll this takes on the environment or the energy grid.

The Republic of Ireland has already felt the strain. In December 2025, the country announced a moratorium on new data centres because the country was running out of power.

As the UK goes ‘all in’ on AI, this pressure is sneaking into the Britains’ back gardens. Data centres are increasingly being proposed in residential areas across the country. In Buckinghamshire, residents of Iver Heath have been fighting a proposal by developer Greystoke to build a 90-megawatt data centre in their area.

In 2022, developers Greystoke Land and Altrad UK began to push for a data centre to be built in Buckinghamshire. The proposed data centre would be in Iver, and would constitute a 90-megawatt facility that is 72,000 square metres in size. Buckinghamshire Council rejected this development, but in 2024 the UK government overruled this decision.

For Leigh Tugwood, co-chair of the Iver Heath Residents' Association, the fight is as much about land use as it is energy. When speculative developers like Greystoke make a claim on a site, he explains, they have three years to act and can renew. In the meantime, he says, “that land is effectively sterilised”. Some feel that too much power is concentrated in too few hands, giving large technology firms huge influence in small communities.

After legal challenge from environmental organisations such as Global Action Plan and Foxglove, the government rescinded the planning permission as the original application did not include an Environmental Impact Assessment.

While this data centre was wrongly approved, the community in Iver is continuously fielding similar applications and debates over land use. As Tugwood states: “We could do other things with that land that would create real jobs and would be more beneficial to meet local needs.”

This experience has changed how Tugwood navigates the digital world. He is now more conscious of his use of digital tools, asking himself “what am I clicking onto, what am I doing” and he opts for open-source alternatives wherever possible, even if they are “clunkier”. Tugwood is far from alone in rethinking his interactions with technology.

If you would like to learn more about the impact of your digital technology use, check out this tool: https://www.digitalcarbonfootprint.eu/Or, if you are interested in understanding the details behind the legal case, a summary is available via Global Action Plan’s website: https://www.globalactionplan.org.uk/insights/news/landmark-data-centre-case-sets-precedent-for-binding-environmental-protections

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Author: Claire Ducharme